John McCain's Health Plan - Don't Get Sick in America

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Rose Ann DeMoro
Executive Director
California Nurses Association

With all the fireworks over health care in the Democratic primaries, John McCain has managed to stay under the radar on our national healthcare nightmare.

It's time to begin exposing him to some light. On health care, start by considering McCain's in the context of the tanking economy.

Household mortgage and consumer debt now add up to an unfathomable $12 to $13 trillion, and millions of American families are faced with foreclosure of their homes.
Even before this meltdown, one in six insured Americans were having "substantial problems" paying their medical bills, not to mention the 47 million with no health coverage and little prospect of getting it.

The constellation of foreclosures and staggering consumer debt with un-payable medical bills is a chilling prospect. The 1930s images of soup kitchens and Hoovervilles come to mind. We might have to start talking about McCainvilles with his open embrace of market based approaches that will offer little relief to those staring into the abyss.

Nowhere is that more evident than in his health care proposal, which is grounded in the failed health policies of the Bush administration and its advocacy of market-based schemes like high deductible health savings accounts.

McCain's main healthcare ideas are increased corporate competition to supposedly limit rising costs and tax credits to encourage the uninsured to buy insurance. Neither will do any more than perpetuate the dismal status quo.
Once-a-year tax credits mainly help the healthy and well off, the same people who benefited from the Bush tax cuts he supported. Those who most need coverage will still be unable to afford premiums that now average over $12,000 per family, not including skyrocketing deductibles, co-pays, drug and hospital charges and other fees.
McCain's view that increased competition will constrain costs is equally suspect. Under the stewardship of a market friendly administration the past decade, premiums have jumped 87 percent, far outpacing inflation and wage increases. Insurance companies don't compete by delivering more care or lowering prices. They compete by harvesting more customers and slashing their costs.

The most extensive assessment of McCain's record has been compiled by the AFL-CIO which warns that his plan "undermines existing employer-based health care and pushes workers into the private market to fight big insurance companies on their own. It will reduce benefits, increase costs and leave many with no health care at all."

How does it do all that?