Business Book Lovers

How would McCain guarantee affordable healthcare for all?

Healthcare costs are hurting the budgets of working families, businesses, states and the federal government. Don't tell me someone is looking for a handout when it comes to something as basic as healthcare. A simple accident can wipe out hard-won savings in any family. Now how's McCain gonna do it? Please?

Public Comments

1. The most any candidate can do is to crack down on insurance companies and levy more regulations against them.
2. By doing what they are doing now. Cutting the plan down to nothing. And charging you more for it.
3. How can we afford Obama's universal health care?
4. he wont...he hasn't even addressed that issue to the public
5. He dosen't intend to. In fact he plans to tax the health care benefits you have now.
6. Please - healthcare was a major topic when Clinton was in office...and nothing was done about it. The issue of healthcare isn't because of the republicans.
7. I think neither Obama nor McCain will do much about Health care to be honest. Every election year they talk talk talk and it still stays the same. Kinda like Abortion- Bush is Pro-life and president for 8 years , we still have Abortion cause Bush don't have the power to change it. Most changes on health care in the past were from the STATE. Like in Indiana if you do not have Health care , Indiana will provide it free if you make less than so much money per-month. If every state did what Indiana does everyone would be able to afford Health Care/ Insurance. The president don't control much of the states- just okays Gov. ideas on occassion. Presidents don't work miracles, it has to be a team- which we aint got in office with PELOSI the control freak.
8. Why do people think the government should give them health insurance. It just blows my mind. Get a job, or get two. Take care of yourself, and your family. We have been buying our own health insurance for years, and I don't think that will ever change. America is in enough trouble, taking on a health plan for Americans, will be Americas demise for sure.
9. McCain's plan is tax credits for healthcare. I do not know the specifics of this, though. In my opinion the value of this will depend on the following specific details: Tax credits for health insurance payments, dollar for dollar or not? Tax credits for co-pays, deductables, employee share of health insurance payments or not?
10. McCain has acknowledged that healthcare is insanely expensive right now. His solution is to let Americans shop for healthcare with their own money. (I guess he believes every American is getting insurance through their employer. I'm not sure what he thinks about the uninsured. I guess they must have turned it down at work?) McCain advocates giving tax rebates of $2500 per individual or $5000 per family. With that money, families could purchase policies on their own. It eliminates the tax exclusion for healthcare benefits offered by companies to their employees, and replaces it with the $2500 to $5000 rebates. So basically he believes a tax rebate will solve the problem. That and taking away the tax incentive for employers to provide insurance. This will clearly help business as it will have an excuse not to provide insurance to employees. But will the employees really be benefited? This is certainly an expression in blind faith in the free market, something that McCain is now backtracking on. He also wants to free any insurance plan that is limited by state lines. (So all those crappy plans that other people deal with on the other side of the country can potentially be yours too.) He believes that if the plans can reach more people across state lines, this will make them want to lower their prices. His proposal certainly won't help the poorest people who don't pay more than $5000 in taxes. I have a full time job and I don't pay more than $1000 in taxes myself. His proposal also doesn't address the insurance tactic of not covering people with pre-existing conditions. The only way those people can get insurance now is if they are covered through an employer, which Mccain wants to get rid of. And what about the tactic of raising rates when an illness develops or you get into an accident? Basically his plan comes down to protecting business by not forcing them to provide insurance and increasing the playing field for insurance companies, putting all of his faith on the free market. I wonder if this blind faith in free market economics is well-founded. Should we now bet people's lives that somehow the prices will come down if everyone has to buy their own insurance and group rates are no longer available? Note that McCain's plan includes more deregulation of the insurance companies. It is a tough time to be singing the merits of deregulation. Here is a quote from McCain from a few months ago: "Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation." So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!?