McCain Campaign Says Your Health Care Plan Is Better Than Theirs

This is literally a “DUH” moment for most of the commentors here. We have been saying this for weeks but nobody paid us much attention except KT and then it was only to try to say Obama’s ad was a scare tactic. I hope people start seeing the double talk that McCain is doing with his Health Care plan before its too late. By the way DHE has made that “they won’t leave” statement for months now

One might want to compare both candidates plans. A responsible journalist would provide the data for readers. In lieu of that happening on this post, let me give you the editoral from the NY Times which gives you a side-by-side comparison. For your own opinion. AMC you could have posted this too, y’know?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/opinion/28tue1.html?ref=opinion

sgwhite is absolutely correct. We have been fussing about this for a long time. The bit about the employers likely dropping it has been a well kept secret – I think people have no understanding of this. The cost of coverage for a family won’t begin to be made up in the McCain plan. Yet another hidden benefit for business!

First honest thing they’ve said all campaign.

I just got the same email a little while ago.
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It links to a “fact check” from the McCain campaign. It’s funny. It includes a keeno capsule graphic for the Fact/Fiction dichotomy.
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http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/19ba2f1c-c03f-4ac2-8cd5-5cf2edb527cf.htm

Guess what, do you think employers would pass the savings from not paying insurance premiums on to their employees in the form of wage increases?

I think not. But watch CEOs bonuses grow.

Is that what they mean by “An Inconvenient Truth”?

This one might be the funniest.
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OBAMA FICTION
Americans With Pre-Existing Condition Under The McCain Plan Will Not Find Coverage.
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THE FACTS
John McCain believes that no American should be denied access to quality and affordable coverage simply because of a pre-existing condition. As President, John McCain will work with governors to develop a best practice model that states can follow – a Guaranteed Access Plan or GAP – that would reflect the best experience of the states to ensure these patients have access to health coverage. There would be reasonable limits on premiums, and assistance would be available for Americans below a certain income level.
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That’s a very long-winded way of saying “Yes, that’s true.”

Bwa-ha-ha! Did DHE hold up his Blackberry to demonstrate McCain’s accomplishments or did he go for the defibrillator?

When we had this discussion with KT this summer, the New England Journal of Medecine had published a comparison of the two plans. The link is not in the format I recall, but does provide some information.
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http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/359/8/781.pdf

And it’s not a “gaffe,” AMC. It’s pretty much a lie. Or, if you prefer, distracting spin.

re-edited version do you think employers would pass the savings from not paying insurance premiums on to their employees in the form of wage increases?
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I think not. But watch CEOs bonuses grow.

std- you’re new handle is funnier, at least.
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Makes me think of a John Cage version, with pasta and cheese as instruments.

Off topic…McCain land swap with Keating associate

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/254/story/54851.html

Hah. That’s interesting. WordPress oonverts embeds into hyperlinks.

“Why would they?”
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I worked for a company that was bought out. At the company meeting the question was asked “Are you going to close this office?” The answer by the new owner “Why would we?”
Closed 12 months later.
Whenever someone uses a rhetorical question that should send up a red flag.
Or am I wrong?

One of the irritating things at this stage of the campaign is that nobody really explains anything in the least bit clearly. The real intention of the Republican health care plans is to increase the cost of encounters, so that people use less health care. But they can’t say that out loud. Neither can Obama. It’s too complicated a point to make. It’s like Obama’s claim that not one penny of tax relief will go to 100 million Americans. In this case, he’s using the republicans’ favorite definition of “tax” to mean “the federal personal income tax.” But McCain can’t point that out because it’s 1) too complicated, and 2) nothing he can afford to have people understand.

Why would you be?

jayack,

I send you a virtual chocolate pierrot puppet for getting the joke. I figured if Cox could make a John Cage allusion I could throw in a little Schoenberg. And I actually really like that piece. The staying power of its weirdness (1912 premiere) is awe inspiring.

THE FACTS
The McCain health plan builds on the employer-based system. Employers will have the same incentive to provide health insurance as they do today since they will continue to deduct the cost of health insurance they provide to employees.
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Another funny one. Yes they would have the same tax incentive. But the reason they offer these plans is not so they can deduct them from their taxes. The reason they offer these plans is to attract and retain workers. The tax incentive lowers their cost for doing so, but it is still a substantial cost. If there is an alternative method of getting insurance, they can say to their employees that this benefit is no longer needed and save money. And, in the worst case scenario, they’ll all do it, as in the replacing of pensions with 401Ks and not use the benefit as a means of attracting and retaining workers.

Wages wouldn’t go up if employers stopped paying premiums, would they?

Why go for clarity, when you can obfuscate?

Amplifying, this is like saying that people take out mortgages because they can deduct the interest from their taxes. No, they take out mortgages because otherwise they can’t buy the house. The tax incentive encourages them to direct their monthly housing check to a mortgage rather than a landlord, but it is not WHY they take out a mortgage.
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Hilarity.
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And at this stage they are still playing defense on what is arguably the most pressing issue in most people’s lives right now. Losing a job weighs heavily, but one reason it does is if you lose insurance, you are effectively toast.

Wages wouldn’t go up if employers stopped paying premiums, would they?

If labor markets were truly freely competitive, wages would go up by more than the premium. There are substantial administrative costs in addition to the premium itself.

I have it on vinyl, pastapocketboy. Haven’t listened to it in years.
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Making pierogie is part of my extended family’s christmas tradition.

jayack wrote: “The real intention of the Republican health care plans is to increase the cost of encounters, so that people use less health care.”

This really troubles me. So many medical problems can be cured if caught early or avoided entirely through adequate preventive care. That preventive care is cheap compared to what happens if you don’t see the doctor, and what was once a curable or minor problem becomes deadly and/or expensive to treat. See: mammograms, colonoscopies, Pap smears, cholesterol and other blood tests, etc.

Wanting to decrease medical encounters is, to quote an archaic phrase, penny-wise and pound-foolish.

The only labor market which is competitive is for chief executive officers. It’s not a free market, either.

Suzie and Jay, the GOP health plan sounds like rationing health care, doesn’t it?

jayackroyd: If labor markets were truly freely competitive, wages would go up by more than the premium. There are substantial administrative costs in addition to the premium itself.
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More likely that the employers would pocket the difference, but yes, in theory that’s how it would work.
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(I figure that this won’t get out of moderation until sometime well after the discussion has moved past this, but oh well.)

Incidentally, I just started a new part-time job at a local bakery this week. I worked with a woman yesterday whose husband became terribly ill a couple of months ago. He also worked at the bakery. Neither one of them had health insurance.
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Long story short: Because he had no insurance, he was unable to afford to go to Johns Hopkins, the best place for the treatment of his particular disease. So he is in much worse physical shape than he would have been had he had insurance, and will take much longer to get back to work (maybe two years). Also, he and his wife are now thousands and thousands of dollars in medical debt. I felt so terrible for her, and told her so. She just shrugged and said, “You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. We can’t pay it, and they’ll have to accept that at some point.”
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Sometimes I can’t believe stuff like this happens in America, a country with so much wealth.

To my utter surprise, McCain’s proposals for substantive issues have been at every turn, well … radical. Spending freeze. Move away from employer-sponsored tax-refundable health insurance. Buy up bad mortgages from bad actors. There’s more, and they add up to why the “Obama is a radical” attack has not worked as well as it might have: because McCain himself is lobbing radical policy grenades into the political landscape at an alarming rate. What’s worse is that they don’t appear to have grown from any organic party or ideological womb. This is the worst kind of mavericky maverick. I don’t have enough faith in Douglas Holtz-Eakins to bet my family’s future on what he can get past Steve Schmidt.

“THE FACTS
The McCain health plan builds on the employer-based system. Employers will have the same incentive to provide health insurance as they do today since they will continue to deduct the cost of health insurance they provide to employees.”

The other difficulty with this statement is that incentive models cannot override the basic mandate of survival. If it makes a company more competitive and likely to survive not to offer insurance, IT WILL NOT BE OFFERED. PERIOD. McCain’s plan is thus horrible policy in that it encourages increased risk taking at the very time when we need to moderate risk.

I never encountered the pierogie until I moved to Pittsburgh (18 years ago to my surprise).
The kids, who are natives of the burgh, love em. And honestly, who could not love the idea of carbs wrapped in carbs? Maybe this Christmas we we will adopt the local custom and make pierogie from scratch.

But almost on topic, I loved that Steelers president Dan Rooney gave Obama a personalized jersey with 08 for the number.

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pierogielunaire: I never encountered the pierogie until I moved to Pittsburgh..
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Ditto for me, ‘cept I had to move to Michigan before I felt the power of the Pierogi…and even then, it wasn’t until I moved to the Detroit area that I had one that wasn’t frozen.
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Of course, you haven’t lived until you’ve had that other delight of Polish cuisine, the packzi. There’s even a Packzi-day parade down in Hamtramck, and the bakeries and bars are open for celebration…

I hope someone (The D-backs, maybe?) will hand Palin Jersey No. 12 and see how she reacts.

McCain’s plan also pushes the decision down to individual actors with low sophistication and limited or no bargaining power who will be up against large corporate interests. In other words, please welcome payday lending style hucksterism to the health care world.

Andy, if you are reading this I think I have an idea why your old name is out. Remember the simple thinking of the bot and that g_crush had to change name because of the letters that followed g in the old one. I’ll be the bot doesn’t like the three letters following the first letter of your state name. If you were to use the post office abbreviation, I’ll bet you wouldn’t have a problem.

“the three letters following the first letter of your state name” = ASS. Ass, ass, ass.

It’s a sad fact that the most exciting parts of many Pirates games the last few seasons have been the Pierogie races.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pierogi_Race

ivb, to paraphrase Arte Johnson, very interesting.

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ivb3016: …that g_crush had to change name because of the letters that followed g in the old one.
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I’m not happy about that, by-the-way. It’s a common food, fer crissakes…

I suppose I can’t expect to see wall to wall CNN coverage on this particular bit of fraud and voter suppression:
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http://hamptonroads.com/2008/10/phony-flier-says-virginians-vote-different-days

jayackroyd,

Actually they have run stories on that flyer on both CNN and MSNBC. Of course FOXNEWS not so much

Jay I wouldn’t stay up late to see it. It will not get a mention.

Lets see if you are correct ivb

grape juice

g=ap= juice

Massachusetts

M-sschusetts

ivb I think you’ve got it.

the correct spelling got booted

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jayackroyd: I suppose I can’t expect to see wall to wall CNN coverage on this particular bit of fraud…
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I posted that in the last thread, but it’s still in moderation. No more anchor tags, I guess…Shame, ’cause if the address is too long, it extends past the frame.
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Anyhow, TPM has the text:
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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/phony_virginia_flier_tells_dem.php
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Due to the larger than expected voter turnout in this years [sic] electoral process, An [sic] emergency session of the General Assembly has adopted the following emergency regulations to ease the load on local electorial [sic] precincts and ensure a fair electorial [sic] process.

All Democratic party supporters and independent voters supporting Democratic candidates shall vote on November 5th as adopted by emergency regulation of the Virginia General Assembly.

All Republican party supporters and independent voters supporting Republican candidates shall vote on November 4th as precribed [sic] by law.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electorial [sic] process.

Strangely enough, it was handed out in heavily African-American districts.

Let’s see if this works

Thanks ivb and g_crush

I tried to post a link to the Pierogie race at PNC park and it’s stuck, maybe the the bot flagged “Pittsburgh Pirates” as an obscenity. Can’t say as I blame them.

ivb–
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I thought that Andy’s problem was obvious. That was the reason I made the Beavis and B#tthead remark.

Ah, apparently not. Sorry Andy. I should have spoken up earlier.

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Hey! Got moderated again! Must be the URL, not just the anchor tags. I’m thinking that in their effort to git rid of comment spam, they’re stopping all linkies.
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Simple solution would be to only automatically put comments with more than two hyperlinks in moderation, but what do I know?

No prob, Andy from Marseachusetts. (Wonder if that will go through?)

Is it me, or are the words caught in the moderation filter on HuffPo little short of insane?
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Anything that mentions candidates’ names, veep candidates’ names and other various assorted politicians are held back. Think about it. A political site that filters out politicians. How effectively run would a soccer site that held back the words ‘Beckham’, ‘Zidane’ and ‘Ronaldinho’ be? And it doesn’t stop anyone, you simply end up with people typing 0bam_a and M_Cc_ain. Ridiculous.
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It would make a lot more sense to me if the filter on Swampland was set to simply catch obscenities. That’s how it was set previously anyway.

if you have a blacklist of words, why not have a whitelist of words that overrides the blacklist? is this stuff rocket science?

[...] Time’s Swampland: McCain Campaign Says Your Health Care Plan Is Better Than Theirs [...]

[...] I’ve done the rest of the work for him. This is a good start. By removing the incentive for employers to provide health care, many of you will end up trading a $12,000 group plan for a [...]