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McCain has unleashed a new TV ad in some areas which touts his health care plan. He hasn’t spoken too much on this topic other than he believes a “socialized” system isn’t the answer.
Here’s the ad in it’s entirety:
Some analysis of it from Yahoo News:
Even McCain acknowledges it could take years to create enough competition to make it affordable for people to leave employer plans for private health insurance plans.
He also recognizes the fear raised by critics that older, sicker workers could be left with soaring premiums as young and healthy people leave employer plans for newer, cheaper plans.
McCain insists that he would set up a safety net for those high-risk workers. He said Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., that he would encourage state governments to create guaranteed-access plans.
McCain has talked about his plan for several months but is spending the week talking about health care. Still missing are details on the total cost of the plan and an estimate of how many people it would help.
There are more than 40 million people in the United States who don’t have health insurance.
McCain chose to run the ad in Iowa — where he came in fourth in the January presidential caucuses — because it is a general election battleground state, and he plans to visit Des Moines on Thursday.
Sounds like McCain’s plan is a mixture of government and private programs.
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Well, I repeat what I said in another post:
In what seems to be a surprising turn of events (ate least it surprised me), now McCain is changing his stance in healthcare and contradicting his previous views on the subject. Check it out:
http://www.politico.com/n.....Page1.html
With this McCain is showing a great deal of flexibility and has scored some major points with me. He seems to notice quickly when he may be disinformed about a subject, and it’s a very good thing he’s trying to correct it. Even if it is for his campaign’s sake, I think is very admirable.
I agree that more walk-in clinics and such could decrease some of the cost in emergency room visits, but who’s paying it? If it’s not free, or very cheap, poor uninsured people will not go to them, instead waiting until they are in a situation that requires urgent care. This is no change from the current system, unless McCain is willing to reverse his stance on socialized medicine, which I doubt.
The other point about this ad that I found interesting was the repeated hook, “It’s not the quality of healthcare, it’s the cost of healthcare”. Really, the quality of healthcare in America is almost as abysmal as the costs are high. American hospitals rank a dismal 37th in the world in quality of services, just behind such medical meccas as Costa Rica. More than 100,000 deaths occur in hospitals each year from preventable errors alone, not to mention the hundreds of thousands more who die because their insurance would not pay for treatments that would have saved their lives.
The problem is not that there is too little competition in the market, it’s that there is too much. I believe that the healthcare industry merits the title of natural monopoly in the following ways.
1. The healthcare industry is a neccessity.
2. There is no substitute for healthcare.
3. There is only sufficient demand to allow for one company to obtain a level of output that fully exploits the relative economies of scale.
What does this mean? It means that competition will only increase the costs, because their competition for better QUALITY of care exponentially increases the longterm costs of production, which with demand stable will increase the PRICE of healthcare to unmanageable levels.
If there is so much competition as to quality of care, why then is our actual quality so low? Simply because our system is SO expensive indeed that companies can only produce products with marginal levels of quality, or else risk running with costs higher than revenues. This is why they don’t want more preventative care, because it yields a much lower profit margin than, say, cancer surgery. Added competition will only prove to exacerbate the healthcare crisis.
Most industrialized countries have figured this out, and that’s why you see (though not on Fox News) the relative quality of their healthcare rising, while the costs are falling. America has quickly fallen behind the rest of the industrialized world because we have failed to realize this fact. That is not to say that we need an all-out socialized system, but rather a system based in which there exists only one chartered healthcare company, insurance company, etc. in any given market area, much the way utilities are regulated now. The government would then heavily regulate the industry, ensuring that the levels of production are commensurate with minimizing end-cost to the consumer, and maximizing access to services.
I believe McCain overall plan for healthcare is the best possible method. I also believe it needs to be more affodable and avaliable
Michel, I saw your last comments on the Hurricane Katrina thread, and made a note about the documentary “Sicko”. If I understand you correctly, you would like a group of competing health care businesses that would get funds from the government so they could offer free service? And the government would give MORE money to the businesses that are doing a better job? What do you think would happen to entrepreneurs who want to work outside of the government’s interference, or to those citizens who want to not have health care? Would it be forced on them?
Christopher,
Well, to answer those questions of yours.
…”You would like a group of competing health care businesses that would get funds from the government so they could offer free service?”
No, not competing. It would be a government-run free universal healthcare plan, where there would be competition between doctors by assigning merit-pay. They would try to earn those premiums by curing more people. A system like the present one, where profit is so important, makes the health of the patients secondary, and many unnecessary drugs are prescribed, and many people are denied insurance (insurance they PAID) by grasping at straws in their medical pasts and the possible “experimentation” of some (much needed) treatments.
…”And the government would give MORE money to the businesses that are doing a better job?”
Exactly. In weaker economies like the UK this is possible. That’s one of the main reasons I think that McCain’s and Bush’s tax-cuts for the citizens with high incomes is counter-productive. It hasn’t reactivated the economy and it has deleted the possibility of social plans in areas that are desperate for them, like healthcare or the foster of national oil production.
…”What do you think would happen to entrepreneurs who want to work outside of the government’s interference, or to those citizens who want to not have health care?”
Citizens that don’t want health care? Perhaps you mean citizens who don’t want to pay for health insurance. Well, that’s precisely one of the reasons that the existence of free health care would be good. Because it would allow treatments who those who didn’t have insurance in the first place. Maybe not the best treatment, but actual treatmente, and in many cases there would be life-saving or life-improvemente, you tell me.
If there are bussiness who want to work outside the government-run medical care, they are free to do it and necouraged to do so. This entrepeneurs can establish their practice parallelly to the tax-payed medical care. And then this private bussinesses would have to face REAL competence against free (and maybe less efficient) health care. And that would be the first step towards the normalization of the prices of many drugs and treatments, which do nothing for the patients and a lot for the drug companies.
So, I hope that answer your questions.
Michel -
Don’t forget that the government will definately need to increase spending in the area of research and development, to offset the drop in private R&D. I don’t think this will be a problem, however, seeing as how the government already spends 1 trillion per year already financing the hodgepodge that is our current healthcare system (on top of another 1T from consumer spending).
Do you think this system of health care will result in less corruption than the current one? How?
Josh,
That’s right, and there’s also the money that’s destined to finding market to the military techonology industry.
It reminds me of one ex-member of the british parliament paraphrasing a common theme the british kept repeating in the years after WWII: “if you can find money to hill people, then you can find the money to help people”. They knew that if they had the money and the people employed to fight the germans, then after that they had the money and employment to build hospitals and schools and recruit nurses and teachers. So we all need to get to that without having to go through a major holocaust like they did, and that should do it.
Chris,
I have one firm belief about our current health care: it’s profit oriented. And when you have a profit oriented health care service, then you have conflict. A conflict of interests. On the other hand, I may be simplifying here for the sake of clarity, but I believe that to implement a merit-pay system is the only way to go. After 2003, with the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement And Modernization Act, 800 billions tax dollars were given to the drug and health insurance industry, and after that and infrastructure was created where the rates and costs of drugs were accorded between the drug companies and the insurance companies, the latter being the intermediaries between the patients. So the drug prices were shot through the roof, and all the health care continued to fully rely on the insurance companies, most of which have at least 4 types of rquirement systems for which they can deny their clients their insurance.
Where’s the competition there? I don’t know.
So yeah, I think a system without insurance qualification and no profit oriented service would be a less corrupt one than the current health care infrastructure. And probably people will heal better, faster, and more gratefully.
Here’s an article to paints a quite clear image of McCain’s tendency to change his stances from time to time (specially when one of those times is during his presidential race):
http://www.swamppolitics......_then.html
But well, he has lived for a long time, so he has experienced lost of things the justify his continous flux of new opinions
It’s not that the current system is corrupt so much as it is that what the consumer and producer “want” in this case are fundamentally opposed. It is a system that by it’s very design cannot and will never work. The situation formed by Capitalistic healthcare is a moral abhorration, in that no other nation allows their citizens to die while standing by and saying “it’s not the government’s job to take care of us”. I have to say, for the record, however, that I hated Sicko, and I hate Michael Moore. Why? Because there was plenty of fact and “meat” as it were to base that documentary on, but he favored pandering and publicity stunts over figurative analysis, and that’s what it always seems to be with him.
Josh, can you give me a reference to the statistics you’ve stated above? I’d like to read some of them.
I’ll throw in my .02 here on the current health care system. Only part of the blame actually goes to the health care community, the other goes to insurance companies who attempt to control, dictate, and obstruct the health care community because their bottom line is premiums and payouts. Both will have to fixed for success in a new system.
Well, Josh, not everything on Sicko was figurative analysis. It sure relied a lot on testimonials, but it did resent facts. For example, and that’s one of the things that I think Babs was asking for was statitics.
Here is some of the thigns presented by the documentary: the ranking of the United States health care system, according the World Health Organization, is number 37… behind of Costa Rica and ahead of Slovenia.
http://www.photius.com/ra.....ranks.html
There’s also some other statitics. In the western world, America is the only country without free universal health care, and the one with (again in the western world) with the worst infant mortality rate.
I don’t have any links for that but with a quick search I thnk that will show up. Just look for it.
So, yeah, I think that’ it was a pretty decent documentary. It had insider information and it also presented facts. It was dominated by drama, I can assure you that, but there were enough cases shown for me to believe it was taken pretty seriously. However, I respect your opinion on the film, and I even find irrelevant its quality as a serious study on the matter.
I hope that those statitics Babs was asking for will help her form an opinion on the matter, though.
Yes that’s the ranking of quality, too, for all of you who think the adage “you get what you pay for” applies to our healthcare system. Another couple of figures from last months issue of Fast Company.
$2Trillion - The amount of money the United States spends yearly on healthcare.
$1Trillion - The portion of that 2 Trillion that comes from government funding.
60% - represents the percentage of GLOBAL healthcare spending that the United States spends.
How is it that we spend over half of all the money spent on healthcare in the entire world, and we are still 37th in quality? Most economists, I think, would agree that this points to, as I said before, the fact that the healthcare industry needs to be dismantled and run by one company per market area, just like any other natural monopoly.
It’s not that I didn’t think there were a lot of good facts in Sicko, I just thought Moore gave the wingnuts way to much ammo with all the drama and pandering, and it really hurt the overall impact of the film.
Going back to what you said the other day, Michel, you said the biggest problems with our current health care system are its lousy prices, its low quality, and that it’s unable to reach everyone. You also said that free universal health care would encourage private researchers to compete with the government. What do you propose to keep government officials from trying to monopolize private industry? How do you propose that citizens keep the government accountable if it slackens on the quality of health care (and things covered in health care)?
Chris, monopolization of the healthcare industry is precisely what we want. In some circumstances, it is most cost and quality effective to have a single company. As far as accountability goes, at least if the industry is controlled by the government the people have their votes to exact at least some measure of control over the situation, which if far more than what we have now.
A vote is not as powerful as money, though. If someone gets elected on the pretense of improved health care, how are the people supposed to stop the inevitable abuses? Since bureaucracies are notorious for red tape, how long do you think it will take for the government to expel an embezzler? On the other hand, under the current system, you have some choice in which provider to select, and are able to put financial pressure on the groups you don’t like. I am not saying ANY of our providers is doing an adequate job, although I have not researched the matter enough. It’s just that people will get their needs met more immediately and efficiently if they don’t have to go through a deliberately complicated bureaucracy. I don’t know whether you think the Constitution is outdated, but it explicitly says that government should not envelop areas that are not spelled out in the Constitution. There were medical emergencies in 1787, but the Founding Fathers did not write in the Constitution that Congress should mandate a health care program that would be in every state.
Votes are money to those in political office. You have to look at it in relative terms. Of course there will be abuse in a government-run system, there always is. However, I would argue that it would be difficult for even the American government to match the private healthcare industry in rampant, widespread abuse.
Also, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any choice whatsoever in my health insurance. How many jobs offer plans from different companies. The “choice” between taking what you can get from your employer and trying to procure health insurance as an individual is not a choice at all, not to mention private insurance plans are total crap anyway, a waste of money if you can even get one.
The Constitution, even in it’s preamble, varitably reeks of endorsement of a national healthcare system, if they had had such a thing. The Supreme Court, in the case of U.S. v. Meade back in the 60’s (I think), described the Constitution as having “prenumbras”, meaning that the rights that were contained within the Bill of Rights should be interpreted to extend to other rights not explicitly stated. Do you believe in the right to privacy? Well, if you do, then U.S. v. Meade is the source of that right. It is reasonable, especially if you have ever read Jefferson or any writings of the other framers, to expect that they would have viewed healthcare as a right if this issue had been around in their time.
What are the reasons you think we need free, universal health care NOW, when, in hindsight, we have done adequately as a nation without it? Government is to defend people’s rights, not GIVE people their rights. The Decl. of Indep. says our Creator gives us rights, and that government’s duty is to defend those rights. Health is not a right. Why should health care be?
First, let me clarify why I say health is not a right. I suppose the word “right” is interpreted in different ways. To me, it means a gift you’re given when you’re conceived. These can be taken away by oppressive people. Not everyone is even conceived healthily, and not all are born alive. Many are even born with deformities. Everyone is conceived FOR THE PURPOSE OF being born, though. Even if you don’t believe in God (and I’m not saying you don’t), you will not deny that conceiving a child and then aborting that child violates the natural cycle, as well as the gift of life. With health care, we SHOULD nourish life, but I am very particular (as we all are, from our different perspectives) about government’s involvement in this. Government should primarily defend our rights, not GIVE us our rights. That means protecting us from enemies and dangerous influences, to me. A dangerous influence, for example, is a person who walks around joking about taking a gun to school. I do not believe the Constitution or Declaration of Independence would be violated if you arrested that person, because we are protecting people’s lives based on a relatively recent and CONSISTENT PATTERN of people following through with their threats. The point I am making is that the constitutional method is hard to determine sometimes.
Government’s role in health care endangers our freedom less if even the individual states passed laws governing it. The federal government is forbidden to do this by Amendment 10: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
So that is my perspective.
There are many powers that the federal government now assumes that were not originally delegated to them, one must understand that the Constitution cannot be viewed as a solid document locked in a much simpler time. One must view the Constitution as fluid, able to adapt to changing situations. We must look at what the framers would have likely opined about the subject, and how the Constitution that they did write might have been written had it been written in our time. That is what it was designed for. Government run healthcare has shown that it cannot be successful at the state level, it has in fact nearly bankrupted several states. Contrarily, many nations have shown that nationalized healthcare can work wonderfully at the federal level, so why then should we not work toward a solution that will be beneficial in protecting the general welfare, and the futures, of our people?
For the record, I do not believe in God, rather I am an Atheist (technically agnostic, as I do not discount the possiblility, but…). That said, I’m not so big on the idea of abortion, at least within the context of my own life. It is interesting that you brought this up because the case, U.S. v. Meade, that I brought up was the basis for the later decision of Roe. v. Wade, coincidental, no? I agree with the Supreme Court, however, that while I may disagree with abortion for myself and within my family, it is not my place to dictate what others believe within the context of their own lives. Abortion isn’t a real issue, however, so I don’t even consider it when I vote, because even if I was against the practice entirely it is highly doubtful that it will ever be changed.
So Josh, do you think the Declaration of Independence is also subject to change, as you think the Constitution is? Do you think that the mention of a Creator in the D of I diminishes your respect for what it says? Also, I want to comment on your statement, “Government run healthcare has shown that it cannot be successful at the state level, it has in fact nearly bankrupted several states.” You know, I’m sure, that the Social Security and Medicare programs are in crisis. Why would universal free health care that is federally managed (instead of by states) come to a different end?
It doesn’t work for the states because they cannot control the practices of insurance and healthcare corporations that are based outside of their state. Social security and Medicare would be in a lot better position if the feds (on both sides of the aisle) had curtailed the practice of “borrowing” money from the coffers and never paying it back. The other problem with social security, specifically, is that too many people assumed that it was a bona-fide pension account, when it was only designed to be a stop-gap. However, I don’t believe that social security should stay public at this point, because this is a system that has shown itself time and again to run better in the hands of private industry. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not some kind of commie who believes that the government should own all means of production! I don’t want the government controlling the car I drive, the food I eat, the house I live in, or my retirement account for that matter. There are some things that, due to the inability of private industry to obtain the most socially acceptable result, that we must use government intervention to obtain that result.
I don’t believe that the Constitution is subject to change, only that it should be interpreted to cover situations and issues that the framers could have never dreamed of addressing, simply because they did not exist at the time. This is what the Supreme Court is designed to do, but the answers can also come from the legislature as well. The Declaration does not establish our governmental system, nor the rights that we are guaranteed as Americans, it was not designed for that purpose. It was simply a letter to the King of England, a document that is now locked in it’s place in time.
As for your question about the “Creator” line, did you intend the question as an attack or a a genuine question? I’m not one of those Atheists that automatically hates and discredits all mention of religion. I could care less that they spoke of a “Creator”, that was the social norm of the time, and even now I have no problem with someone expressing their beliefs, unless they are disrespecting me in the process. The religious people I dislike are the ones that feel that they must evangelize every person that they speak to in the course of their day. These are the same ones who feel it is their duty to dictate how others live their lives. These people are turn my stomach, especially when they complain about how much they are offended by atheism.
Christopher, I would like to offer you answers about how we, as costumers (patients) could hold the government accountable for delivering a poor health care. The same way we hold the government accountable for everything that goes wrong with its decisions… protest. Is protesting enough? I don’t know. But that’s the system. Two other things that would prevent the health care from decreasing its quality:
- Doctors wouldn’t be receiving money as well. Remember merit-pay system. If the health indicators of their patients look good, then they receive bonuses in their salaries. If they don’t look good, then they don’t receive the bonuses. So, they would be losing money as well, so they would work harder to make their services the best possible.
- If costumers are dissatisfied with the free government-run health care, they could always decide to be treated at the private hospitals, be covered by privates insurance companies, and buy their drgus at private pharmacies. And if I’m right about this, their prices would have decreased really really much, so it would be more accesible.
And by the way, I don’t believe in God, but I respect very very much all those who do. My wife is a catholic. However, I don’t think that the Constitution should be read through religious points of views. However, if you want to engage in rethorics about how we give or protect rights, I will follow you:
Life is a right, because, as you say, it’s provided to us from birth.
We must protect life.
Health sustains life.
To not provide health care is to not protect our right to live.
So, according to the Constitution, the government is obligated to provide us (the people) with the better health care possible. If health care is in crisis right now (as many people agree) then government must take measures and create ways to perfect it. And if I have to pay taxes to ensure that other people besides me receive good health care, then I glady will.
You say that we, as a nation, have done adequately without free universal health care… but that’s only because you evaluate it through your eyes, and maybe through the media. You must agree that both thing may be quite biased. I beg you: don’t wait until you are a victim of a flawed health care system. Work to perfect it before it gets to you. That’s all I’m saying.
I was asking a genuine question, rather than trying to harass you, Josh. It does no good to harass someone most of the time, and it’s really not in my nature to do things that way. I think the reason private industry is doing so poorly is ultimately because of legislation and the Federal Reserve that tamper with our economy. Someone else explained my viewpoint better (on a different political forum): “The advent of HMOs began the upward spiral of medical costs. When an insurance coverage has to cover every expense, the premiums get higher, when doctors become contractually obligated to only charge a certain amount for services, the started adding services to each visit. Vicious cycle.” Congress established HMOs in 1973. The intent, I believe, is to get people to see the federal government as a better alternative, moving us to more of a centralized state. No one wants other people to control every part of his life, but people in power push the limits as far as they’re allowed. Federalism, as delineated in the Constitution, is the separation of powers between the federal government and state government, to avoid such a concerted effort toward ever-greater control.
Also, Michel, I agree with you that the government has a responsibility to protect our health, to a point. According to the Constitution, its primary responsibilities are to keep states cooperating and protect our borders. Often, as with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it’s the citizens’ initiative (including private business), not the government, that is more effective at dealing with problems. Citizens would take more initiative if legislation and court rulings weren’t deliberately blockading them. I didn’t intend to say we’re DOING okay without free health care–just that we developed and thrived as a nation up until FDR’s New Deal without a government-sponsored health program. We do have more technology today that makes it costlier, though (tests and surgeries, etc.). We need a change. I’m not keen on how to do that, but I think much of the problem would get worked out if the government de-established HMOs and stripped down the restrictions.
I’ll be expecting some more counter-arguments
.
Chris,
Thank you for being open-minded! Sorry I had to question your motives there, but it’s often difficult to discern the tone of someone’s questions in electronic format. There are a lot of bigots out there that attack atheists for no good reason (and a lot of atheists that do the same, to be sure).
You are correct to believe that HMOs are a huge problem (as are PPOs). The HMO system did not come from a drive toward governmental control over the healthcare system, however. The HMO system was a plan hatched in a backroom deal between Nixon and a guy named Edgar Kaiser (anyone from the West Coast will know of him, and of Kaiser Permanente). This was a way to give MORE control to the healthcare industry, not less. What it essentially did was to create a system where the HMOs could dictate everything about medical care in America (the government had little say). They set up a system, as it is now, where you have to go to certain providers to get care. Under the new system, the HMOs forced their partnered providers to operate at the lowest possible cost, thus the lowest possible quality. Physicians were forced into this system, because if they didn’t join and agree to the HMO’s terms, they would have no patients to practice on, thus putting them out of work.
Over time, the government did step in, and put in place more quality control mechanisms, and required that HMOs not dictate the location where a patient can recieve urgent care, and instituted rules barring hospitals from refusing patients for lack of insurance for urgent care. One thing that they did not do, however, is establish a price-cap or a fair pricing code by which to control the costs.
The HMOs, and the newer PPOs, now had higher costs, as they now had to ensure a minimum standard of quality for their patients. Rather than take the hit in profits, they raised the price of coverage, even though the regulations fell short of requiring any real increase in the dismal level of quality-of-services.
When the rules forcing hospitals to accept patients for emergency care regardless of insurance, they failed to provide the people with any means of getting insurance. Hospitals saw record costs, and lines. The Federal government allowed them to write off the losses from unpaid bills, and of course the hospital conglomorates saw fit to take advantage of this by raising the prices of ER services exponentially, with no justification.
This also created a system in which people had access to care only in the worst stages of an illness, when that care is the most expensive. Preventative care is not available, even now, to people without insurance, so they wait until their illness becomes unmangeable. For instance, if a person with a heart problem goes to the doctor for a checkup, the doctor will likely find that problem, prescribe medication and/or treatment, and the problem will be controlled. The total cost will probably be about 200 bucks for the visit and tests, and maybe another couple of thousand over the long-term for medication and treatment, but I’m talking over a period of years, here. If that same person lives under our current system, and lacks insurance, he will wait until he has a heart-attack, and will of course be rushed to the emergency room, and will have to likely spend months or years in rehab. and out of work. The cost of treating the same person has now become hundreds of thousands of dollars. We could have treated literally hundreds of patients for the same cost as treating this one. Many people who do have insurance meet the same end, because they have ridiculously high co-pays and find it difficult to procure preventative treatment even WITH insurance.
So yes, HMOs should be torn down, but even then the cost will not drop, because we must guarantee that people can get coverage to keep prices down (either that or just let them die, which is not something I would like to see). Private industry, in this case, has shown itself to be unable to provide for both it’s own interests, and the interest’s of the consumer. Private industry will always serve itself first, especially if you’re dealing with large corporations that have no “conscience” of their own. We must intervene by either establishing our own national system, or by, at the least, establishing STRICT controls on both quality and cost. This is difficult, however, because it seems that our lawmakers nowadays have a very difficult time resisting the massive gifts given to them by the healthcare lobby.
Christopher, you make some good points here. I’ve lived long enough to be familiar with the pre and post HMO era, and I agree with you that the program just doesn’t work for the consumer, and sometimes restricts a consumer from receiving the best care in certain instances.
As I understand it, chronic illnesses account for 3/4 of the nation’s health care bill. That alone opens a discussion for millions of people to be excluded from health care due to the pre-existing illness clause in most health insurance policies, or at the very least pay an overinflated premium. Some think this is the reason millions of people have no health insurance, and if the 75% statistic is valid I would tend to agree. By and large, people have no option at this time to carry their company insurance coverage with them upon leaving a job and if they suffer from a chronic illness that puts them in jepardy of not being able to be covered under a new company’s policy and certainly not able to afford private coverage. I’m just not clear on how a universally mandated program like both the Dems propose will help consumers unless the biggest reform that should take place first actually does. I’m like you, I’m not sure how to do this. But forcing consumers in certain categories to buy health insurance….they sure better make it an affordable quality coverage first.
Babs, only one Democrate is proposing a universally mandated system, the other is simply offering to start with making it affordable, and working from there. That was always my question about Hillarycare. Why must it be mandated if it is going to be so great?
Josh, Obama’s plan includes a mandate for children’s coverage, so he is at least partially mandating health care as well.
Exactly, why mandate it if it’s going to be so terrific. Makes it seem as though we’re too ignorant to make basic decisions for ourselves, the government has to do it for us. That’s why I back McCain’s plan.
McCain has no plan, you cannot rationally call it that.
Well, yes, Josh, I can. =)
California currently has a health care system in which all young children are covered. Now, the state is in major economic trouble, but much of this has to do with other factors, not this stance. And as a parent, and childcare provider at times, I a fan of California’s plan regarding children and health care (at least from what I have seen and heard).
Why should children be without health care? They have no choice in the matter, they have no ability to pay for it, but desperately need it. In California, parents are not forced to pay for it. Children are automatically qualified for a California state health care insurance. It’s not great, but it’s something.
Michael, you ask why should children be without health care - I\’ll ask you, why should anyone be without health care? Because the health care system is broken and out of control. Mandating is not the answer, though. If the California system of insuring children works without a mandate, maybe someone should be looking more closely at it. Like maybe a presidential candidate? =)