With the Democratic and Republican primaries just around the corner, InDies is going to break down the candidates viewpoints on our favorite topic: Health Care.
I'm going to warn you, it was quite a quagmire to sift through both Obama and McCain's health care reform plans as stated on their respective web sites (perhaps just appropriate response platforms to the current health care junk show.) So, I am going to point out what I felt, after reading their online viewpoints (I wonder if McCain even knows what his URL is?) were the key pieces of their plans.
Obama:
Read in more detail Obama's health care reform here.
Key Points:
- Universal health coverage for children with option to remain on parent's plan until age 25.
- Health Insurance reform to measure quality, fairness in costs (reforming system to remove the monopoly-like hold insurance companies have over premiums) and remove limitations currently set by pre-existing condition clauses. Essentially, under Obama's plan, no one should be turned away because of a known chronic illness or health issue.
- Improve hospital care to reduce medical error, hospital-born illness and physician/nurse staffing strains.
- Focus on preventative care
- Focus on advancements in medical records technology, biomedical research, improving mental health care, improving health care for Americans with disabilities and more.
- Allow for state-federal flexibility. For example, if a state is already experimenting with new health care approaches, the federal government will only require they adhere to certain, fundamental protocols, but not interfere with the state's plan.
- "Quality, Affordable and Portable Health Coverage For All" - this is the wam-doozle of the entire platform (the one Hillary debated him on early in the race for the nomination.) Obama's plan will offer health coverage to all Americans who opt to buy into the plan, and a National Health Exchange subsidy for those who cannot afford the plan outright, but who do not qualify for Medicaid.
McCain
McCain's plan is easier to tell you about, because there were a ton of similarities between his and Obama's plan.
Right out the gate, on the McCain Health Care web page of his campaign site it reads:
"Making Health Insurance Innovative, Affordable and Portable." Sound familiar.
McCain's plan promotes many of the same ideals as the Obama plan from where I am reading:
- Improved access to quality, universal coverage
- Improve medical record and health care technology
- Flexibility with state plans
- Preventative care
- Removing restrictions on pre-existing conditions
- Reform the health insurance industry to remove the monopolistic behavior
In the end, I would need a policy wonk to tell me what really makes these two plans very different.
Bottom line is that the health care debate is a stand-alone issue. It can't be compared to any of the other problems we face today because at it's core, health is personal and emotional.
When we get sick, we feel weak, vulnerable and down right lousy. Imagine you felt like that every day for months, even years at a time? And, then imagine that you had to quit your job because you were too sick to manage and then you lose your health insurance, and your three kids do, too. This is why health care is an emotional issue. This is why we can't analogize it in the upcoming primaries.
Maybe it's our puritanical, protestant beginnings that toss away the notion we could even get sick, have a baby, or God forbid take a lunch break at work and enjoy a moment during the non-stop work day. But it seems to me that no one in America is breaking down the health care debate to this simple fact: People will get sick and need help, so health care coverage should be a fundamental right as opposed to a fundamental worry.
/And if you want to make the issue about money, investing in preventative care and supporting the health of individual Americans will, I guarantee you, save our country more money in the long-run.
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