McCain’s Radical Agenda

[CptSternn]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/op...=1&oref=slogin

Talk about a shock to the system. Has anyone bothered to notice the radical changes that John McCain and Sarah Palin are planning for the nation’s health insurance system?

These are changes that will set in motion nothing less than the dismantling of the employer-based coverage that protects most American families.

A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.

There is nothing secret about Senator McCain’s far-reaching proposals, but they haven’t gotten much attention because the chatter in this campaign has mostly been about nonsense — lipstick, celebrities and “Drill, baby, drill!”

For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.

“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” said Sherry Glied, an economist who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Ms. Glied is one of the four scholars who have just completed an independent joint study of the plan. Their findings are being published on the Web site of the policy journal, Health Affairs.

According to the study: “The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now.”

The net effect of the plan, the study said, “almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care.”

Under the McCain plan (now the McCain-Palin plan) employees who continue to receive employer-paid health benefits would look at their pay stubs each week or each month and find that additional money had been withheld to cover the taxes on the value of their benefits.

While there might be less money in the paycheck, that would not be anything to worry about, according to Senator McCain. That’s because the government would be offering all taxpayers a refundable tax credit — $2,500 for a single worker and $5,000 per family — to be used “to help pay for your health care.”

You may think this is a good move or a bad one — but it’s a monumental change in the way health coverage would be provided to scores of millions of Americans. Why not more attention?

The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)

Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison into the system. It’s the beginning of the end.

When younger, healthier workers start seeing additional taxes taken out of their paychecks, some (perhaps many) will opt out of the employer-based plans — either to buy cheaper insurance on their own or to go without coverage.

That will leave employers with a pool of older, less healthy workers to cover. That coverage will necessarily be more expensive, which will encourage more and more employers to give up on the idea of providing coverage at all.

The upshot is that many more Americans — millions more — will find themselves on their own in the bewildering and often treacherous health insurance marketplace. As Senator McCain has said: “I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health care system to the patients themselves.”

Yet another radical element of McCain’s plan is his proposal to undermine state health insurance regulations by allowing consumers to buy insurance from sellers anywhere in the country. So a requirement in one state that insurers cover, for example, vaccinations, or annual physicals, or breast examinations, would essentially be meaningless.

In a refrain we’ve heard many times in recent years, Mr. McCain said he is committed to ridding the market of these “needless and costly” insurance regulations.

This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone.

You would think that with some of the most venerable houses on Wall Street crumbling like sand castles right before our eyes, we’d be a little wary about spreading this toxic formula even further into the health care system.

But we’re not even paying much attention.

[CptSternn]

Removing all government oversight to let the market police itself. We all see how well that has worked in the mortgage markets.

[7734¯7IA3]

Originally Posted by CptSternn

Removing all government oversight to let the market police itself. We all see how well that has worked in the mortgage markets.

And what exactly do YOU suggest we replace it with huh? Like it or not the whole world is going asunder and there's nothing you can do to stop it...

I'm quite glad to see the disintegration of democracy...LMFAO! it doesn't work!

I'm waiting for corportate capitalism to crash and burn so that the N.S.D.A.P. (and the Fourth Reich) can be right there to pick up the pieces and restore the glory of the hegemony of western european ideology to the rest of the world...and RE-colonize the poor countries again...There are alot of pissed off ppl in this world dude....

[Godslayer Jillian]

Ah ha! I knew it.
You're too idiotic to be for real. No one in their right mind could be an actual neofascist. You're just pulling our strings. Kudos for your elaborate trolling.

[Jonathan]

Does this mean I would be able to request that, instead of the 90% contribution to health care that my employer gives me, I receive the cash in hand to do with as I please?

If not, then not interested. McCain's little tax credit would get me at best a few months.

Anyone that has ever looked into extending their medical after leaving a job knows how expensive that kind of insurance can be. For an individual. I can only imagine how scary this is to someone with a family to support.

[onedarkly1]

Lets just hope that enough Americans have had enough of the current administration and all its bumbling, or else McCain could be in the driver seat.
__________________________________________________ ___
"Some people are like slinkies...completely worthless....but still put a smile on your face when you push them down the stairs."

[noveleigh]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Does this mean I would be able to request that, instead of the 90% contribution to health care that my employer gives me, I receive the cash in hand to do with as I please?

If not, then not interested. McCain's little tax credit would get me at best a few months.

Anyone that has ever looked into extending their medical after leaving a job knows how expensive that kind of insurance can be. For an individual. I can only imagine how scary this is to someone with a family to support.

Seriously, it's ridiculously expensive. With McCain's plan, we're going to have more uninsured people than we started out with.

It sounds like this program is going to make it more difficult for companies to offer insurance benefits, make employees pay taxes on the insurance the company does pay for, or allow them to completely bypass the company benefit and pay for insurance on their own little lonesome; which is fucking expensive. It was apparently an average of $7,600 for a single person in 2007, much more than the promised $2,500 refundable tax credit. Yes, let me just pull that extra $5,100 out of my ass. I'm afraid to go into what insurance costs per family was in 2007, since an entire family would only getting double the amount of tax credit a single person would get.

[7734¯7IA3]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

Ah ha! I knew it.
You're too idiotic to be for real. No one in their right mind could be an actual neofascist. You're just pulling our strings. Kudos for your elaborate trolling.

I assure you a neo facist I am...and there are alot of ppl who are in the same mindset......Trust me Godslayer... its only a matter of time...and if you have money in the stock market, I suggest you re-align your money wisely...there is going to be a huge fundamental shift in thist retarded globalist economy mindset that has been dominant over the last six years...Now that major governments have taken a large share in their country's banks, you will now see a "nationalist/protectionist" policy unfold...ha, ha, ha...das perfect storm into das fourth reich!!! mother fucker!!

If countries invest in their banks, every gov't will now compete with each other but now in a more open monetary style....ha, ha, und Hitler will be resurrected and the fourth Reich will begin....Booo...ha.ha.ha.h.a Haaaaa!!!!

And I pray for that day....

[Albert Mond]

Originally Posted by 7734¯7IA3

I assure you a neo facist I am...and there are alot of ppl who are in the same mindset......Trust me Godslayer... its only a matter of time...and if you have money in the stock market, I suggest you re-align your money wisely...there is going to be a huge fundamental shift in thist retarded globalist economy mindset that has been dominant over the last six years...Now that major governments have taken a large share in their country's banks, you will now see a "nationalist/protectionist" policy unfold...ha, ha, ha...das perfect storm into das fourth reich!!! mother fucker!!

If countries invest in their banks, every gov't will now compete with each other but now in a more open monetary style....ha, ha, und Hitler will be resurrected and the fourth Reich will begin....Booo...ha.ha.ha.h.a Haaaaa!!!!

And I pray for that day....

Translation: "I suck Hitler's cock. Pity me."

[LaBelleDameSansMerci]

Originally Posted by CptSternn

crucible

[tangent]Some chemistry teacher burned thermite in class. He put it in a ceramic crucible, on a stand, in a pie plate filled with sand, on the table. It burned through the crucible, though the sand and pie plate, through the table, and into the concrete floor before it stopped.[/tangent]