And Rightly So!

Very little about John McCain excites me, I admit. I’ve read all of his platforms on the issues, and there are two that catch my eye as being absolutely necessary. The first is his foreign policy views and the War on Terror. This is mostly why I will support him.

The second issue of importance to me is health care reform. McCain dares to stand out from the crowd and today he shared more details of the idea he has. It will take a lot of people out of their comfort zones, but in order to truly reform health care we must stop our dependence upon employer-provided health care insurance. Along these lines, McCain also realized this isn’t going to possible for everyone. So he will leave in a government funded back up plan for those who cannot get insurance through the usual means.

TAMPA — Senator John McCain, detailing his plan to solve the nation’s health care crisis, called Tuesday for federal intervention with the states to assure coverage for people who have been denied insurance.

Mr. McCain’s health plan centers on eliminating the tax breaks for employers who provide health insurance for their workers — a marked departure from the current system — and giving $5,000 tax credits to families to buy their own insurance. His goal in shifting from employer-based coverage to having people buy their own policies is to encourage competition and choice, and to drive down the costs of health insurance.

People should buy their own health insurance plans. Then, and only then, will we begin to see real reform. Costs would be known and budgeted for; people would not abuse the system as so many do now. Plans would better suited for different families- those with children, those without, single men, women, older people- would all have choices as to what types of coverage to buy. It doesn’t make sense for men to have to pay for maternity coverage; just as it makes no sense for women to cover prostate care. Why should non smokers pay for the usual and customary costs associated with smokers’ illnesses?

The bleed hearts whined though:

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, recently asserted that she and Mr. McCain could both be left uncovered by Mr. McCain’s plan because she has cancer and he has had melanoma. Stung by such criticism, Mr. McCain is trying to find a way to cover people with health problems while still taking a generally market-based approach to health care.

“I’ll work tirelessly to address the problem,” Mr. McCain said in a speech here at the Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute at the University of South Florida. “But I won’t create another entitlement program that Washington will let get out of control. I won’t do it. Nor will I saddle states with another unfunded mandate.”

We need to have a back up plan for those people who cannot get insurance. It’s pretty simple to except this fact. When we don’t, we pay for it in other ways. But we don’t need huge government programs designed to cover people who don’t truly need it; or that become so burdened with red tape and inefficiency they end up costing more to run than to pay out…(Medicare rings a bell here) Nor do we want programs like the expanded SCHIP fiasco of last fall- where middle income families could enroll on state sponsored (and federally paid for) insurance while they lived the good life making poor choices as to where to spend their money. McCain is correct in his stance on this.

Mr. McCain’s speech here implicitly acknowledged some of the shortcomings in his free-market approach. But rather than force insurers to abandon cherry-picking the healthiest patients, Mr. McCain proposed that the federal government work with the states to cover those who cannot find insurance on the open market. With federal financial assistance, states would be encouraged to create high-risk pools that would contract with insurers to cover consumers who have been rejected on the open market.

The free market in health care has blown it, time and time again. I am now convinced they deserve one and only one more chance to show they can truly solve this issue. The motive of profit and the issue of health care don’t always go hand in hand and free market proponents must start admitting this truth. We have to stop fooling ourselves into believing costs can actually go down. They never will. We can prevent them from going up out of everyone’s reach though.

McCain’s plan is radical and it will piss a lot of people off if it comes to life. We need it though. Because sooner than later not too many of us will be able to afford health insurance, and more of us than not will be denied coverage as a free market solution. Can we allow this to happen? I say no.