The Political Voices of Women

I think John McCain may have just lost Florida, and therefore the election.  How?  Not only is John McCain’s healtcare plan a dud for most Americans.  Especially, anyone with a pre-existing medical condition (ie: asthma, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes).  But, McCain will cut Medicare to fund his (so called) Healthcare Plan?  Yes.  McCain is planning to cut $1.3 Trillion dollars over 10 years from Medicare, to fund his healthcare plan.  Is this some kind of joke?  No.

From The Wall Street Journal…

In the months since Sen. McCain introduced his health plan, statements made by his campaign have implied that the new tax credits he is proposing to help Americans buy health insurance would be paid for with other tax increases.

But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain’s senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled.

McSame to Cut Medicare to Pay for His Terrible Health Care Plan

Guess how J. Sid McSame intends to fund his terrible health plan that taxes employer based health care coverage and gives insufficient tax credit to employees to struggle finding health care insurance on their own?

He plans to make big cuts in Medicare!

Yesiree, multimillionaire J. Sid McSame, who has had government paid health care coverage his whole life and collects Social Security which he called a disaster, and US Navy disability checks, wants to cut your Medicare benefits! How’s that for robbing Peter to pay Paul!

From The New Republic…

Barack Obama says John McCain would raise people’s taxes by changing the way the IRS looks at health insurance. McCain says he wouldn’t.

Who’s right?

Quite possibly McCain. But only because he’s decided to slash Medicare and Medicaid instead.

Laura Meckler, who is one of the sharpest and most reliable policy reporters around, has the full story in today’s Wall Street Journal.

McCain to slash federal programs in favor of wealthy’s tax cuts…

The McCain camp has been dogged in recent weeks by a number of questions, not the least of which has been, “How will you pay for your proposed tax cuts?” Today we have our answer: cut Medicaid and Medicare.

From Hullabaloo…

Paul Krugman further explains McCain’s dangerous health care plan today, and he wrote it even before this attempt to gut health care entitlements:

The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).

Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.

And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.

By the end, Krugman announces himself “terrified” by the McCain campaign’s ideas. You should be too.

So, how do you feel about the McCain healthcare plan? Scared? If not…You probably should be. Let me know what you think in comments.