BG Editorial: McCain's plan to decimate employer based health care

McCain, on the other hand, would use the tax code to shift insurance from the workplace to the marketplace. Under his plan, employees would start having to pay income tax on the value of the healthcare premiums they receive from their employers, making it a less attractive benefit. At the same time, McCain offers a tax credit of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families toward the cost of coverage at work or in the private, nongroup market.

The upshot, analysts say, is that many young, healthy workers would reject their employers' taxable insurance benefit and either go without or find a high-deductible, low-premium policy on the private market. This would leave employers with an insured base of older, less healthy workers, which would drive up the cost of their insurance. The likely result is that many companies would drop coverage altogether.
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After a Republican primary campaign in which candidates and debate moderators rarely mentioned healthcare, healthcare specialists are beginning to take notice of the radical base of McCain's plan. David Snow, the CEO of Medco, the largest US manager of drug benefits, told the National Press Club this month that McCain's plan "will create chaos." Robert Laszewski, a Washington-based consultant on benefits, has said that under the McCain plan most companies would stop paying for healthcare in three to four years.
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Another danger with the McCain plan is that these nongroup insurers would compete by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals to cover and charging steep premiums to those with preexisting conditions or family histories of diseases. McCain's answer to this is that he would work with the states to expand the existing system of "high-risk pools" for the hard to insure. But these plans charge such high premiums with such limited benefits that in 2006 fewer than 200,000 people had enrolled in them.


http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/09/21/worlds_apart_on_healthcare/

Preexisting conditions. And then even if you get insurance, when you try to claim benefits, they drop you by cobbling up some phony malfeasance that allows them to cancel without penalty.

You think drug companies are the villains of the health care drama? They're overtime parkers compared to the master criminal insurance companies.

And that's who McCain wants to force us all to do business with.

The man is a disaster on all.imaginable.fronts.

And tell him he can't use Cindy's money.

I know I've been there. There is NO oversight of these criminals. They spend millions digging through people's medical records to look for any excuse to deny payment, and failing to find any proof of a 'preexisting condition" they will fabricate one.

They have been caught doing this time and time again but continue to do it because there is almost NO regulation of this industry. At most, the pigs are required to pay for a person's medical bills after MONTHS of fighting and letter-writing and phone calls. VERY rarely, they will be successfully sued, but by that time the insured person is either dead or bankrupt.

Below is an article about just one insurance company and their corrupt practices. I dealt with them and they are contemptible. They denied my claim after four months of harassing every doctor I had seen in the past FIVE years. The "proof" of a preexisting condition for my claim was a complete lie. As soon as they received a letter on my husband's letterhead (he is an attorney) with copies to the state insurance commissioner, and documentation from the Connecticut Attorney General's office of the company's history of corrupt practices, they immediately paid my claim.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/72261.php

Said McCain told how he would deregulate the health care industry.

He followed up by saying, "Can you imagine that?"

No, I can hardly imagine what a totally deregulated healthcare industry might be like.

If this doesn't convince people this guy is a lunatic, nothing will.



Cher

It is what they do, as Republicans. McCain's tax credit would pay for a Newt Gingrich/Dick Armey 'health savings account'--an appropriate vehicle for healthy young people to save and invest--not for comprehensive health care. You can bet your ass John McCain will stick with his comprehensive health care plan he gets for free from the U.S. Government, plus his Veteran's Benefits, as well--with all the health problems he has!