More Republican McCrap 3
From FactCheck dot org. As always, follow the link for the full analysis:
Sounds good. But McCain failed to mention how existing employer-sponsored health benefits would be affected.
- Employers could no longer deduct the cost of health plans for their workers, which several experts say is likely to cause companies to reduce or eliminate health benefits for their employees.
- Workers would be taxed on the value of any employer-paid health benefits, partially offsetting the $5,000 credit for those now covered by such plans.
The aim of the McCain plan is to reduce health care costs through increased competition, by encouraging individuals to shop around for health insurance and medical care. There are many who favor such an approach, and we take no position on it one way or the other. But McCain’s simplistic ad misleads viewers by promising to give “every American family” a $5,000 benefit while failing to mention what he would also take away.
As I pointed out shortly after I started this blogging thingee, competition and health care are incompatible. Sick people are just not in the position to shop around for health care. They go where their doctors send them and do what their doctors tell them to do.
This could more properly be called the Rich Insurance Company Preservation Proposal.
God help that the rich should fail to get richer, while the middle class and the poor are still there to get poorer.
April 30, 2008 at 2:57 pm
"Sick people are just not in the position to shop around for health care. They go where their doctors send them and do what their doctors tell them to do."
This just is not true, and it bothers me that it’s being used as an excuse to take away my discretion in my own health care. Sick people shop for health care all the time. If that weren’t true, hospitals in India and Thailand wouldn’t be doing a booming business servicing Americans these days.
May 1, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Sick people who go to Thailand and India and Mexico for health care share two characteristics: Â They are desperate and they can afford to travel overseas and overland.
They are not typical.
When Linda had her blood pressure attack, we were in no position to call up hospitals and shop prices. Â She had blood pouring out of her nose and it wouldn’t stop.
We went to the nearest hospital.
We are not talking about elective surgery and here.  We are talking about persons in fear for their lives. Â
Oh, yeah, and Linda has a test coming up. The family doctor does the test at one and only one local hospital.
Should she shop around, find a cheaper hospital, then find a new family doctor that uses that hospital, or should she stay with the practice that was finally able to stabilize her blood pressure after her previous doctor failed to do so over a span of years?
The current system does not provide health care. It enriches insurance company CEOs, while it inpoverishes patients and turns doctors into clerks who spend half their time fighting with insurance companies. It is, sadly, unlikely to change, because enriching CEOs seems to have become a national pastime.
And that has nothing to do with promoting the general welfare or forming a more perfect union. It has everything to do with greed.
But, as I have demonstrated, NeoCons worship greed and idolize the wealthy.
Pardon my French, but get real.
May 1, 2008 at 3:29 pm
So if the greed of the insurance companies and CEOs is the problem, why doesn’t the Democratic Party start its own non-greedy insurance plan and offer cheaper insurance?