Barack Obama has already argued a lot with Hillary Clinton about their respective health-care plans. Now he’s shifting the debate to John McCain, with whom he has much broader policy differences.
Obama and rival Hillary Clinton are both pushing universal health-care plans that would expand government’s responsibility while also keeping a role for private insurance. McCain wants to shift health insurance tax breaks from employer-sponsored insurance to individuals and families, who could apply a tax credit to insurance they buy on an open, less-regulated market.
McCain’s also alluded to taking steps to make it easier for the sick to get coverage in that market. (See more here on how both sides are making compromises that make their plans more centrist.)
Campaigning in Oregon this past weekend, Obama said not so fast on the Republican’s plan. McCain, Obama said, “wants to give you the failed Bush health-care policies for another four years,” according to the Chicago Tribune. And what has Bush done on health care? Nothing, Obama said, “except offer a few tax breaks to some folks who don’t really need them.”
Obama added that McCain would “shred” employer-based health care and leave every American to “fend for yourself” in the free market, according to the Tribune.
A McCain spokesman responded that Obama and Clinton “want to insert government bureaucracy into your medicine cabinet, while John McCain is committed to keeping America’s top-quality doctors, and reforming the system so that health-care plans would be made available, accessible and affordable for families.”
Health Blog McCain Bonus: In an opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News, Jonathan Cohn questions whether the sick would be able to get coverage under McCain’s plan, even if provisions are enacted to try to make it easier. The problem remains that insurers “generally won’t offer coverage directly to people with ‘pre-existing conditions,’ since they represent such bad financial risks.”
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