Blog entry

How Progressives Can Be Making Sense in 2008

Bernie Horn — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:18:54 -0400

Let me tell you about a new project from Campaign for America’s Future called "Making Sense 2008." Or, if you want, skip this advertisement and go right to the project’s first set of talking points.

I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that most Americans are progressive on most issues. By margins of at least two to one, our fellow citizens believe corporations and upper-income people are paying too little in federal taxes; oppose repealing the federal estate tax; favor quality, affordable health care for all “even if it means raising your taxes”; support the idea that the federal Medicare program should negotiate prescription drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies; want federal action to address global warming; would require auto manufacturers to make cars more energy efficient; say laws covering the sale of handguns should be more strict; think labor unions are necessary to protect workers; believe that gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military; and do not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad. Most Americans also support traditional conservative principles—limited government, lower taxes, free markets, and personal responsibility. (Yes, friends, polls persistently show this.) In other words, a large group of Americans favor both progressive policy and conservative philosophy. As a result, they may side with either progressives or conservatives, depending on how a political question is framed.

These are the persuadable voters. They’re the ones who will make the difference in the 2008 election because, unlike the progressive/Democratic or conservative/Republican base, they can be persuaded to join either side. And the only way to persuade them is to address issues that are most important to them in language that appeals to them.

Here’s my point—I doubt that very many of this column’s readers are persuadable voters. You’ve made up your mind already. So you’re different than the people we have to convince. Compared to persuadable voters, you may have a different set of concerns and somewhat different values, and you undoubtedly pay more attention to political news, know more political facts, and make different assumptions when thinking about issues.

In short, if an argument appeals to you—a committed partisan—it probably doesn’t appeal to persuadable voters!

So I’m asking you to do something that is not natural for progressives—take direction from poll-tested message frames. How will you know what to say? Making Sense 2008 will produce and distribute research-based talking points on a variety of issues during the election season.

\The first is about McCain’s health care plan and you can see it here: http://www.ourfuture.org/makingsense2008. If you want to receive these talking points—sent about once a week at first and then more frequently as Election Day approaches—please sign up by clicking here.

There’s no doubt that George W. Bush’s administration has been a catastrophe, and that historians will one day rank him as one of our nation’s very worst presidents. That’s why this election is so critical—the very soul of America hangs in the balance. We’ve got to take back America, and soon, before solutions to national and global problems slip beyond our reach. I know you’re going to work your hearts out. Let us help you become a more effective advocate.

Health Care As the New Terrorist to Fear

David Sirota — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:44:02 -0400

Thanks to America's health care system, today was a very stressful day for me. My story is so typical as to be boring - which is a really sad commentary.

This morning, while thumbing through some routine paperwork, my wife discovered that I have no health insurance. Without going into the details, we missed a bi-annual deadline for payment - a deadline that the company buried in fine print, and one that the company didn't even bother to tell us was approaching, or even missed after the fact. They just ended my coverage, with not so much as a letter or a phone call.

Fortunately for us, we discovered the situation before a 60-day continuity-of-coverage window closes, and I got temporary insurance. Of course, for bureaucratic reasons that I don't understand, I'm not allowed to re-enroll in the same plan I thought I was on. I have to wait to do that. Put another way, the health care company that had been gouging me, and then tossed me away without so much as a peep, is perfectly fine leaving me without coverage - even if I'm willing to pay for it.

My initial reaction this morning was raw panic. Until the situation was resolved, I felt like I was going to periodically break down and cry because I felt so completely helpless. But now that the initial shock has passed, I can say I'm lucky in all of this.

I am a sole proprietor so I get gouged on health care, but my wife and I have worked hard to save diligently to pay for coverage through her graduate school (and to those who have flippantly claimed that because I'm a columnist and writer I make a whole ton of money, I will only say that the term "struggling writer" didn't come out of thin air - I ain't complainin' but I also ain't swimming in money). We have the resources, and thankfully, we caught this problem in time. But for every one of me who discovered the problem and had the resources to rectify it, there are probably 10 or 20 who either never figure out the problem until it's too late, can't pay to rectify the situation - or both. Just as frightening is how tiny an error you can make to watch your entire health care safety net be ripped away from you and your family.

Had I, say, been in a car accident in that time period that I didn't know I was cut off from coverage, I would have been bankrupted, and possibly not been able to pay for medical care that I needed to stay alive. That's not an exaggeration. Had I needed any kind of serious medical care in that time period, its very possible it would have cost me my entire life savings - and the reason would be that we innocently missed a bureaucratic deadline that a company didn't even bother to warn us about - or warn us that we had missed.

In a world of unending email and junk mail - a world where the average person is flooded with paperwork - this is an unacceptably small margin of error, especially considering what is at stake. I mean, we're not talking about losing a gym membership or a magazine subscription or your cable television for missing a deadline - we're talking about losing access to life and death medical coverage. And yet, the margin of error that could lose you your coverage is less than the margin of error that a gym or a magazine or a cable company will grant you for their services.

This situation is emblematic of a health care system that is both immoral and broken. Throwing people off their health insurance with no warning because they accidentally misread fine print is sick and wrong - and should be criminal like it is, say, with housing. In many localities, landlords have to give you at least some warning before evicting you for a missed payment. But unbelievably, that's not the way it is with health care.

The behavior is perfectly legal thanks to government policies that allow health insurance companies to do whatever they want, to whomever they want. And the behavior has created a whole new culture of fear. We now not only have to be afraid of Al Qaeda and hurricanes and evildoers, but also of the health insurance companies that we are customers of - and executives from these companies still have the nerve to go before Congress and publicly wonder why so many people hate their guts.

That this fear is now becoming an anger-based political uprising shouldn't be surprising. A population forced to live under this kind of terror - and that's what it is - is one that will start fighting back when the survival instinct kicks in. And by the looks of the polls on health care, the survival instinct has most definitely kicked in. Better late than never.

Join the book club for David Sirota's upcoming book, The Uprising, due out on 5/27.

Conservatism Collapses in the Emergency Room

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:13:48 -0400

A column I've just posted on Firedog Lake takes Sen. John McCain and the Bush administration to task for failing to address one of the most critical failings of our health care system: our overstressed urban hospitals.

It was one of the elephants in the room when McCain rolled out his health care plan last week, which emphasized a wacky free-market fundamentalism as the solution to our health insurance crisis. This week, the House Government Affairs and Oversight Committee exposed the elephant during a two-day series of hearings on what might happen in seven key cities if there were a disaster comparable to the 1994 train bombing in Madrid, Spain.

The results of the survey show that none of the hospitals surveyed in the seven cities had sufficient emergency care capacity to respond to an attack generating the number of casualties that occurred in Madrid. The Level I trauma centers surveyed had no room in their emergency rooms to treat a sudden influx of victims. They had virtually no free intensive care unit beds within their hospital complex. And they did not have enough regular inpatient beds to handle the less severely injured victims. The shortage of capacity was particularly acute in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

What this means is that hospital emergency rooms often aren't equipped to properly handle the day-to-day needs of their communities, much less the burdens of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. And while the hearing did not explore this in detail, this problem is compounded in communities where a large percentage of the patients are low-income and uninsured.

The committee released the report to highlight the damage that could be caused by Bush administration changes in Medicaid reimbursements, a significant share of hospital income. These hospitals are already pinched by reimbursement rates from both government and private insurers that do not fully compensate them for the cost of care, as well as by the millions of uninsured and underinsured patients that use the hospital facilities as a primary care facility because they do not have a doctor.

This is a complicated problem, but it is one that has been made worse, not better, under the conservative regime of the past seven years. We need progressive health care experts to add to the debate the best ideas for fixing our health care infrastructure as well as guaranteeing access to that system to everyone.

The Age of the "Insurance Card Marriage"

Terrance Heath — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:56:02 -0400

Forget green cards. A growing number of Americans are getting hitched to get health insurance.

Some people marry for love, some for companionship, and others for status or money. Now comes another reason to get hitched: health insurance.

In a poll released today, 7% of Americans said they or someone in their household decided to marry in the last year so they could get healthcare benefits via their spouse.

"It's a small number but a powerful result, because it shows how paying for healthcare is reflected not only in family budgets but in life decisions," said Drew E. Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which commissioned the survey as part of its regular polling on healthcare.

...What surprised researchers was that such costs had become a factor in marriage decisions. "We should have asked about divorce," said Altman, joking.

Those who cited health insurance as a factor in deciding to marry tended to have modest incomes. About 6 in 10 were in households making less than $50,000 a year, said Mollyann Brodie, who directs Kaiser's opinion research. They also were younger, with 4 in 10 between 18 and 34.

Maybe they should have asked about divorce. They'd have found that at least some people stay married for the sake of health insurance.

Whether people get married or stay married for the sake of health insurance, who can blame them?

Health insurance is getting more and more expensive. Premiums have gone up 30%, compared to a 3% increase in wages. Co-payments for some prescriptions have shot up, as insurance companies change to a pricing system that charges patients a percentage of of the drugs' actual cost, instead of a fixed amount. And that percentage can range anywhere from 20% to 70%. Plus, insurers are reimbursing less for out-of-network medical services. If you've got cancer, you may have to pay cash up front before getting treatment.

And that's if you are insured, even under-insured. It's worse, much worse if you're uninsured. So, if people get married or stay (unhappily) married for the sake of having health insurance, I don't blame them one bit.

However, no matter which option these people choose, they all have one very important thing in common related to their access to health insurance: they can get married, to each other or to some other partner of their choosing. They might even marry someone they'd have married anyway. But, again, they can.

Do I need to say it? There's an entire class of people for whom marriage (getting married or staying married) isn't an option, because we can't marry each other. And the few alternatives don't really help much either. Just ask Robert Ryan and Ralph Martinelli, whose story I blogged about earlier.

What they didn't know before moving to Idaho could fill a house, and in many ways it does.

The kitchen table holds stacks of legal papers. Medication bottles litter a nearby countertop. The two-story home Robert Ryan, 42, shares with his partner, Ralph Martinelli, 53, overlooks a quaint suburb west of Boise, a rural landscape of ruddy hills that doesn't seem quite as welcoming as it once did.

A 2,400-mile move west that once seemed like a chance at a fresh start, has instead delivered some hard lessons -- especially about moving from a state that recognizes same-sex unions to one of the 21 states that don't.

The couple was stunned when Ryan was dropped from the company insurance plan the two shared in New Jersey, where they were able to register as domestic partners. Idaho does not formally recognize same-sex couples.

"It didn't even dawn on us that this would have an impact," Ryan said.

...A year after they started dating, they registered as domestic partners in New Jersey. Martinelli was told he could insure Ryan under his policy as a Konica Minolta Business Solutions sales manager.

Ryan used the policy to pay for medication to treat his depression, anxiety and the childhood asthma that resurfaced from severe smoke inhalation in the attack.

But he was dropped from the policy last October, shortly after the Konica Minolta company found the couple had moved to Idaho, where they couldn't register as domestic partners. In 2006, 63 percent of Idaho voters approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, effectively outlawing same-sex unions.

Of course, if Robert and Ralph had been Robert and Rachel or Roberta and Ralph, it wouldn't have mattered. If they were married, they'd have been just as married in Idaho as they were in New Jersey. And if they were just shacking up and moved to a state that didn't offer the option of domestic partnership, they could just get hitched.

Boom. Done. Ralph (or Rachel) has health insurance. But they're not Robert and Rachel, or even Roberta and Ralph. So no health insurance for Ralph. Maybe. Robert pays $650 a month that he wouldn't have to pay if he and Ralph were married (and the amount deducted from his paycheck to cover his spouse would probably be a lot less), for a COBRA policy Ralph wouldn't need if they could marry, and that will expire in March 2009 anyway.

(Ironically, Robert's act of paying for Ralph's COBRA policy is a significant indication of their commitment to each other. If Robert weren't paying for the COBRA policy, Ralph wouldn't have coverage.)

A while back, I asked "Is Health Care a Gay Issue?", and at the risk of repeating myself, it becomes one at the point where health insurance is linked to marital status, or at least it should.

Again, I have to go back to the Health Care for America plan, and how it could apply to same-sex couples and our families.

At a stroke, then, no one with a direct or family tie to the workforce would remain uninsured.

…For the small share of people without direct or family ties to the workforce and ineligible for Medicaid, S-CHIP, or Medicare, the Health Care for America Plan would be available as an attractive new coverage option. Premiums would again be based on income, ranging from no premium in the case of those with incomes below the poverty line to the average actuarial cost of coverage for all enrollees in Health Care for America in the case of those with incomes above 400% of the poverty level. In other words, Health Care for America would allow higher-income individuals without workplace ties to buy into the program for a premium that did not vary with age, region, or health status (a so-called community-rated premium).

Meanwhile, Americans without ties to the workforce would be enrolled in the Health Care for America Plan through an individual buy-in, through state antipoverty and un-employment insurance programs, or through new efforts to reach the uninsured when they sought medical care without insurance.

It may not be obvious at first, but it's pretty easy to parse out if you consider how it would apply to couples like Ryan and Martinelli. Even without the benefit of legal marriage, a move from one state to another wouldn't cause Martinelli — someone without a direct or family tie to the workforce (because his partner, Ryan, is not legally considered "family")— to lose his health insurance.

For same-sex couples with children the benefit of a health care plan like this becomes even more obvious. A post by Daily Journalcolumnist Howard Ludwig pointed me to a study recently published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, titled "The Economics of Lesbian and Gay Familes," and among the findings was this interesting tidbit.

Gay and lesbian couples with children are more likely to have a stay-at-home partner. Similar to heterosexual couples, the partner who stays home in a same-sex relationship usually has fewer years of formal education.

Again, the choices for a stay-at-home parent in a same-sex household when it comes to health insurance — in any state where our relationships are not legally recognized — are: (a) purchase an individual health insurance policy at a higher cost than, say, the married heterosexual stay-at-home parent next door who's carried on her husband's policy, which is underwritten by his employer and a paycheck deduction that's a lot less than the cost of an individual policy; or (b) end up doing without health insurance. (Children, under this plan, born with coverage.)

Something like the Health Care for America plan would "divorce" health insurance from marital status because, quite simply, no one would have to get married to get health insurance. And no one who can't marry their partner would face marital status as a barrier to getting health insurance, or pay a much higher price for health insurance as a consequence of not being able to marry.

Health care has cropped up in national political debate again, as Sen. John McCain debuted his health care plan, and the conventional wisdom is that the McCain plan would raise health care costs and generally and already bad system worse. Bill Scher has posted a great blog round-up that includes my favorite assesment of the McCain plan: "Oliver Willis and Masson's Blog sum up what McCain's plan means for you in one word: Pray."

You can bet that if it would make things worse for heterosexual couples, it would do our families even less good.

The Democratic presidential contenders, on the other hand, have plans that pretty much resemble the Health Care for America plan.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have been sniping at each other for months over healthcare, but there's one thing the top Democratic presidential candidates agree on: Americans of all ages should have the choice of buying a government-run plan modeled on Medicare.

The idea, which would set up a competition between a new government plan and private insurance programs, has been overshadowed by the political horse race. But it's one of the most far-reaching and controversial proposals for making health insurance more affordable and more widely available.

The government now guarantees access to healthcare only for seniors and the disabled through Medicare and for the poor mainly through Medicaid. Under the proposals being advanced by Clinton, Obama and Edwards, the government would offer coverage for middle-class workers and their families, with benefits comparable to those now provided for federal employees and members of Congress.

Participation in the government plan would be voluntary, but the approach sparks widely differing reactions.

Equality, for our families is and may continue to be hard to come by much of the time, and hard won where it does exist, while we are in the process of building our lives and our families together; weaving our families' destinies together with those of our community and our country, much as we weave our own together as families. We can walk down the aisle just like any other couples, but may continue for some time walk back up the aisle with fewer benefits and protections than other couples.

But neither we nor they should need to walk down the aisle for the sake of having health insurance. Health Care for All isn't a "gay health bill," and it doesn't single out particular groups for inclusion or exclusion. It does, however, offer a way to provide all Americans with health insurance, married or not. It would treat my family the same as the family down the street, with two legally married parents, because its benefits are not conditional on the basis our marital status or anyone else's. We'd get them whether we're married or not, and whether we can marry or not.

Well, that's a kind of equality, and one that appears to be good for everybody.

Or, to put it another way, for all.

A Glimpse of the Conservative Health Care Future

Bill Scher — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:39:19 -0400

McCain's health care plan effectively ends employer-provided health benefits and has everyone buy health insurance on an "individual market" with fewer "regulations."

Who gets empowered in this deregulated market? We already know, because Congress has partially privatized Medicare, creating private "Medicare Advantage" plans. How are they working out?

The New York Times reports:

State officials say they will soon ask Congress for more power to regulate the marketing of private Medicare insurance plans to older Americans because they are still receiving complaints of high-pressure sales tactics that have led some beneficiaries to sign up for unsuitable policies.

...

In the draft of a report prepared by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, state officials say they have received large numbers of complaints but, in most cases, cannot provide direct assistance to beneficiaries or hold insurers accountable.

...

In the draft report, state officials say that generous federal payments to private Medicare Advantage plans — set by law — have created a “tremendous incentive” for insurers to maximize sales by aggressive marketing.

Medicare pays private plans 13 percent more, on average, than it would spend for the same beneficiaries in the traditional Medicare program. The report says insurers often encourage agents to sell these products by paying larger commissions and bonuses than agents would receive for selling other health insurance products.

“State insurance regulators and consumer groups feel very strongly that these financial incentives have resulted in significant agent misconduct ranging from unsuitable sales to outright fraudulent activity,” the draft report says.

In short: poorly regulated private insurance companies -- which cost more than traditional Medicare -- are more likely to swindle consumers.

Consumers are not the ones who will be empowered by taking this failed experiment nationwide. It's the insurance companies.

The Week In Blog: Conservative Health Care Follies

Bill Scher — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:08:50 -0400

Over at Bloggingheads.tv, Heritage Foundation's Conn Carroll and I offer another installment of The Week In Blog.

Conn and I discussed blogger reaction to McCain's health care plan, which largely draws from the plan supported by the conservative Heritage Foundation. You can watch that particular segment below.

A few things struck me during that segment:

1. Conn has no expectations that such a radical plan would pass Congress even if McCain became president. While his low expectations appeared rooted in the conservative movement view that McCain is bad messenger for conservative policies, there is an implicit recognition that people with employee health benefits are not eager to junk them.

2. When I noted that putting all the cost burden on working families would force families to go to the doctor less -- getting less preventative care which drives up costs overall -- Conn chose not to respond directly. Instead he offered what will likely become a familiar conservative sound bite: you don't have your employer provide your car insurance, why should it provide health insurance?

As usual from the conservative movement, that's an oversimplified question.

The reality is that some people have employer health benefits that they like, some people have employer benefits that are skimpy, and some people don't have health benefits at all.

Responsible reform, like the Health Care for America plan, fixes what isn't working while leaving alone what is.

A reckless and radical scheme that throws everybody overboard to fend skyrocketing health costs by themselves is not going to do anything for people who are struggling, and not going to go down well with people who are well covered.

McCain has gone the radical route, which brings me to my final observation...

3. Conn was not concerned that the contrast in health plans that voters will surely see from the two final presidential candidates would harm the broader conservative effort to further privatize the health system, as he did not believe this contrast would become a focal point of the campaign.

We'll see. True, there are many opportunities for contrast come November. But health care looks to be a big one.

And the conservative offering -- throwing more folks overboard without much of a life preserver -- has little chance to be embraced by the public.

Which means this is a great opportunity for progressives to engage this debate, and show that conservatives are as trustworthy on health security as they were on Social Security.

Weekend Watchdog

Bill Scher — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:37:25 -0400

Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked.

And on Sunday at 4 PM ET, tune in to Air America Radio's "Seder on Sundays" program, where I'll offer the Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up.

Sen. John McCain's campaign adviser and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, will be on Fox News Sunday. As a former business executive, some economic policy questions are in order.

1. You said that McCain's health care plan "puts the choice in the hands of the individual and the family." But the plan has been described as "radical," because it would effectively end employer-sponsored health benefits, push greater costs onto working families, while providing a tax credit which doesn't even cover half the cost of the average $12,000 insurance plan.

How is making health insurance less affordable creating good choices for working families?

2. You have previously said that the off-shoring of American jobs should be called "right-shoring," and that "there is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."

As Sen. McCain is a staunch defender of our current trade and global economic strategy that has contributed to the loss of 3.4 million manufacturing jobs, and is putting 40 million service jobs at risk of offshoring, does he share your comfort level with the continued loss of American jobs?

3. You publicly explained how, as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, you "parked cash" overseas to avoid paying taxes at home. Can you explain why McCain has not expressed support for reform that would ban this tax avoidance practice?

***

Email Fox News Sunday at FNS@foxnews.com

Remember: always be brief, polite and respectful when contacting the media, so our voices will be taken seriously.

"Hard Questions" Needed on McCain's "Radical" Health Plan

Bill Scher — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:31:31 -0400

After Time Magazine's Swampland blog slapped fellow journalists on the wrist for understating the "radical" nature of Sen. John McCain's health care plan, Trudy Lieberman at the Columbia Journalism Review is also struck at McCain's "radical" plan. Furthermore, she delves deeper into the media's failure to ask questions, and the McCain campaign failure to answer them.

John McCain finally came forth this week with what his campaign dubbed a major policy speech, laying out his To Do list for health care reform ... up to this point [McCain's plans] had raised more questions than answers. Tuesday’s address wasn’t much more illuminating. In fact, in some respects, it was utterly confusing. The Straight Talk Express took a circuitous route, and the press did not clear things up.

Basically, in McCain's drive to put even more health care costs on the shoulders of working families, he's not being clear if he plans to do that "by making employees pay taxes on employer-provided coverage or by no longer allowing employers to deduct health insurance as a business expense, or by doing both," and the media isn't pressing him to clarify.

But either way, CJR reports, the McCain plan is a "radical" one.

The important thing to know about McCain’s plan at the moment is that either way ... it’s the proverbial nose under the camel’s tent. It’s the beginning of the end of health insurance as we know it, so what he proposes as a replacement should be very carefully reported and considered. In McCain’s plan, under the banner of consumer choice, everyone will eventually need to find insurance on their own in the private market. In his speech, McCain himself said: “Millions of Americans would be making their own health-care choices again.”

This reminds me a lot of what’s happening to Medicare. The push to entice beneficiaries to buy certain kinds of private-market policies and opt out of traditional Medicare is a wedge that begins to privatize the program. Encouraging people to opt out of their employer health coverage does the same thing—it makes people fly solo when it comes to their health insurance. Is that what American workers want?

The tax part of McCain’s health proposal is radical, far more radical than his rivals’ plans ... The media need to begin asking the hard questions, and soon.

As we well know, making people "fly solo" with their retirement security was widely rejected by the public when conservatives tried to privatize Social Security. So the McCain and his aides may believe it's not in their interest to make all the aspects of their health care plan crystal clear to voters.

All the more reason why reporters should ask the hard questions, and properly characterize the radical nature of what McCain proposes.

Time Magazine: McCain's "Radical" Health Care Plan

Bill Scher — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:18:51 -0400

On Monday, Bernie Horn warned us that Sen. John McCain's health care plan is a "radical scheme." Yesterday, Roger Hickey set up a test for the media: "The reality is, McCain’s proposals would greatly increase the number of uninsured Americans, while also doing nothing about health care costs except increasing the number of people who can’t afford good quality health care for themselves and their families. Let’s see if the media gets both parts of the story right."

Well, the media have largely failed that test, but notably on the Time Magazine Swampland blog, Karen Tumulty slapped her journalistic brethren on the wrist for it (emphasis added):

John McCain has now jumped into the argument with a plan that is, in fact, a radical one. (You can see some good descriptions in the stories that appeared on the front pages of today's New York Times and Washington Post) But the stories really understate the depth of the philosophical differences that he has staked out between the two parties, or the degree to which McCain's would be a departure from the system we have now.

And she paraphrases one expert who says in plans like McCain's that have been tried at the state level, "people end up paying a lot more money for policies that are a lot skimpier."

So, someone in the traditional media is looking at the details and offering objective analysis, albeit on the nontraditional blog. We'll see if other reporters follow her cue, or continue to muzzle the drastic nature of McCain's plan.

Blogs React To McCain's Sick Health Care Plan

Bill Scher — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:19:55 -0400

Since you probably didn't find much substantive analysis of McCain's health care plan in the traditional media, bloggers have taken up the task. And it isn't pretty.

Obsidian Wings:

It's easy to make health policy when you don't allow little things like facts to constrain you: when you can wish away chronic diseases, pretend that corporations are completely unresponsive to changes in the tax structure, and describe programs that leave people with hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care costs as 'making sure that they get the high-quality coverage they need.' It's just not particularly helpful. Plus, it would be even better with ponies.

Rising Hegemon:

...allow me to summarize:

1. Don't get sick.

2. Here's a tax break that will not help you one iota, because you can't afford health insurance in the first place.

3. Let me make sure your employer takes away your HMO, which is sadly all you have -- voila! now you don't even have that.

4. Now, divorce your spouse and look to marry a rich person -- worked for me.

Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review:

I am frankly amazed he offered this as a "solution."

First, he is simply shunting the problem off to the states.

Second, he implies that one or more states have figured out what to do with people who can't get health insurance because of preexisting conditions. Just which state is that? I don't know of a single state that has been able to provide widely available access to health insurance for people who cannot get it.

Third, just who would finance this pool? States have tried so called high risk pools before. Time and again they are swamped by people trying to get in and there is never enough money. Since they have never worked before, how would they work this time?

The Carpetbagger Report:

After John McCain unveiled more details on his healthcare plan yesterday in Tampa, the Politico ran this headline: “McCain moves to middle on health care.” ... Only if the “middle” is the area in which bad policy proposals get run over.

D-Day:

By eliminating state-created mandates to insure individuals for a variety of maladies, McCain would really end up hurting the sick and chronically ill, leaving them with no insurance. An unregulated market would simply refuse to insure people by the millions in an effort to maximize their costs by insuring only the healthy. You know, the way it is now - only worse, because the states would be unable to look out for their own citizens, and insurance companies would start a race to the bottom, bribing states with their business in exchange for lax regulation. The McCain campaign's response to this? Let the market sort it out!

Desert Beacon:

There isn’t much choice, there’s not much competition; and, it’s neither affordable nor available.

AFL-CIO Weblog:

Yesterday, McCain met with a father and son at a Florida hospital and listened to the father’s story of his struggle to pay for his son’s health care. But McCain didn’t mention that his plan would leave that nine-year-old boy without coverage. How’s that for straight talk?

The Field:

...while [the media] were eating up the McCain campaign’s perfectly staged photo op, they left some things out. Like for instance, that while John McCain was pretending to care about sick children, they never mentioned he voted against funding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) because it covered too many uninsured children.

ThinkProgress:

Center for American Progress fellow Elizabeth Edwards, who has in the past pointed out that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) health care policies would exclude people with preexisting conditions like herself, appeared on MSNBC today to discuss the issue. Noting that employer-based health care typically costs families about $12,000, Edwards explained that McCain’s paltry $5,000 tax credit proposal is woefully inadequate.

Senior Moments:

The organization I work for pays an average of $15,600 a year per employee for a family plan and approximately $6,000 for individual coverage. McCain’s plan would leave a family with over 10 grand a year to pay. That’s not going to cut it. What is there about people not being able to afford things that Republicans find so very hard to understand?

Ecuprophets:

Let’s do the arithmetic. McCain’s benefit will amount to less than half of current rates to cover a family. You are on your own as far as buying insurance goes, and it’s going to cost you way more than $5000 out of your own pocket if you’re covering a spouse and/or children. So in effect, you’re already behind with McCain if you currently have employer-based coverage, unless you happen to work for Ebenezer Scrooge.

Hutch Report:

It is amazing what happens to a lifelong Republican when they give up on their party and start thinking for themselves. In that statement I am referring to myself because until a few years ago I could be counted on the back the good old GOP at election time because of my conservative beliefs. However, President Bush and other members of the Republican Party have helped me see the error of my ways over the past three or four years and now I consider myself a proud independent American that is thinking for himself for the first time in years. While listening to some sound bites on television today where John McCain was talking about health care in America, I once again discovered why I left the GOP and also why that was a smart decision. There are no new ideas when it comes to improving health care in America from the Republican Party, because the powers that be in the Republican party, including presidential candidate John McCain are living in the past and have no desire to edge toward the future.

Oliver Willis and Masson's Blog sum up what McCain's plan means for you in one word: Pray

If digesting all the details of McCain's plan is making you sick, perhaps a brand new installment of "PopUp DoubleTalk" will perk you up:

UPDATE: Firedoglake weighs in:

The bottom line: McCain hasn't even tried to achieve universal coverage, or even coverage for today's uninsured children. His mechanisms for controlling costs are ideological fantasies. McCain's tax changes -- from business deductions to individual credits -- would be a radical experiment, with no assurance it would work, serious doubts that it would be paid for, and no solution for the fundamental problems of relying on the private insurance industry to ration health care and control prices. It's extremely unlikely Americans would be better off, but quite likely the transition would be a mess. However, the insurance companies would love it.