McCain Health Care Plan
Oct 6th, 2008 at 1:00 pm by Susie
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.
In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.
Deregulation for health care will do for health care what it has done for banks.
And we know where that got us.
This year: Dow Jones was up at a record high to 14,185.
Today, 10/07/08, it is below 9500.
“And the words of the prophet are written on the subway halls…”
THINK about that for a minute…