John McCain’s Health Care Nonplan
John McCain’s market approach to health care is a fiasco waiting to happen. We already know from Nixon’s White House recordings (after the tone) that discloses the original concept that Health Management Organizations will be to collect payments from employers and individuals without providing benefits to those insured. It is the primary method by which HMOs make a profit as presented to John Erlichman by Edgar Kaiser founder of the infamous Kaiser Permanente HMO. The marketplace provides this incentive. The idea that shifting the burden of insurance cost from the employer to the employee “to foster competition” is irrelevant with such a business plan in place. What will the private insurers compete for?
McCain plans to provide a $5000 tax credit to families in order to pay for insurance. This does a whole lot of good for those people who make $5.85 per hour minimum wage. Since $5000 is nearly half the yearly wages of $12168 for a 40 hour work week, these people won’t receive more than what their current tax refund already is. The tax credits don’t help them one iota.
McCain plans to help the poor by providing some money to the states to administer. However, his plan calls for state administered insurance “pools” so that chronically ill, injured, and older people can be covered. Basically, the states will be “contracting” with insurance companies who will then administer the state programs. This smacks of privatizing Medicare and Medicaid. It has been demonstrated time and again that privately run programs cost more and provide less than non-profits or Medicare.
The McCain plan is like a wolf in sheeps clothing. The wolves are the HMOs. The rest of us are being fleeced.
(Read Bleeding the Patient for a great analysis of the private health care industry.)