Let's talk healthcare
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Link
McCain:
$2500 tax credit (5k to families) to help them acquire healthcare on their own.
Open up state lines to provide people with more insurance options.
Imported drugs
Obama:
Mandate that all children have access to healthcare
Shift responsibility of drug purchasing to the government (the theory being more buying power = bulk = cheaper)
Nationalized insurance plan similar to the one federal employees get (you can opt out)
All employers would be required to provide their employees with coverage, or pay towards the cost of the public plan
Thoughts:
where is McCain's 2.5-5k coming from? How much does a family plan cost, and is 5k enough to actually help?
Are the options between states that alluring? Is it that much cheaper for me to get the Aetna plan from jersey instead of from PA? When this happens isn't it in the best interests of each insurance company to standardize their national prices?
Do we want to pump that much money oversees to buy foreign drugs?
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Some mandate Obama. That's getting it done. (I haven't read anything that specifically details how this works.)
The government tends to spend way to much on toilet seats, I don't trust them to be fiscally responsible with our drugs.
I like the nationalized insurance. Nothing THAT socialist about it. Just the option of going to your government and getting a plan you can afford, if you're railed across the board by the private sector.
All employers... tough sell. I don't know what the effects of this would be, but I imagine there'd be more than the desired result. And perhaps some of those extra features wouldn't be so desirable.
tada. -
5K will more than help, I'm self-employed, with pre-existing conditions that require $400 a month in prescription drugs + $290 a month in doctor's visits, yet for $782 a month, my whole family is covered for medical costs, my medicines are covered except for a total of $45 in copays, and my doctor's visits are totally covered.
The average family of five could aquire their own health care for approximately 2/3 of what I pay. -
Perhaps your state is much different than PA, but I pay (or rather, my work pays) nearly the amount you mentioned on health care for myself alone. However, assuming McCain opens up healthcare across state lines like he wants to do and I get access to healthcare like yours, a family of five would blow through that tax credit in less than a year. What do they do then? It's not like we're helping to put them through college or something; there is no return on the money they put into their healthcare.
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I think 5k a year would get destoryed by million snad million sof families, but I don't know enough about it. I just know that I myself *could* (I "have ADD" and could get drugs for it and check ups and psychiatric shit for it under my mom's plan) spend well over 3k alone each year. Maybe it's just PA like court's saying.
If I had to pick out the biggest problems I have with both plans I'd pick on their pharmaceutical acquisition platforms. John McCain wants to funnel billions of dollars overseas purchasing drugs for less, while simultaneously expressing nearly complete faith in trickle down free market economics. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is going to waste billions upon billions in *tax* dollars trying to reduce the cost of drugs for the middle and lower class.
If I were to examine the whole plan I'd have to say I like Obama's plan more based on sheer pragmatism. But it's a purely philosophical point for me and a purely practical decision for many, many more Americans. So I'm not going to be voting on this issue.
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