McCain's Health Care Plan Will Cut Into Medicare and Medicaid

Anyone planning on using Medicare or Medicaid in the future should read this article from the Wall Street Journal very carefully.

It has always been my opinion that John McCain’s health care plan for working people will be ruinous for many of us, including me. My company sponsored health insurance costs my employers approx. $6,000 per year. Instead of receiving this health care plan as an untaxed benefit, under John McCain’s plan my employers and I would be taxed on this sum, making it impossible for my employers to continue providing this benefit. In lieu of this, I would be forced to take out individual insurance at about double what my employer pays for a group plan, or roughly $12,000 per year. In return, John McCain’s administration would give me a $5,000 tax credit. This would leave me holding the bag for $7,000 per year, an amount that I simply would not be able to cover, which would leave me without health insurance.

However, it has now been revealed by Senator McCain’s campaign that his health care plan will not only affect health care for working people but also for seniors and for people in need of assistance. The tax credits that Senator McCain is proposing will not only be be paid for with tax increases but also by cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, approximately $1.3 trillion dollars worth of cuts over the next 10 years. At a time when the number of new people who are becoming eligible for Medicare is increasing substantially every year with baby boomers who are turning 65, and at a time when the nation's economy is forcing more and more people to turn to government aid just to keep body & soul alive, common sense dictates that we need to be putting more into Medicare and Medicaid, not less. Who does this make sense to, except the very wealthy?

McCain claims that his health care plan will help the market correct itself and therefore lower health insurance rates will become available. Yeah, right. We've seen what happened to the markets when McCain's deregulation allowed it to run wild. What makes anyone think that the health insurance market will see lower rates when the entire country is forced to buy individual plans? They'll have us by the short hairs, folks, and we know what big corporations do when they have the public at their mercy. They fleece us for every dollar they can squeeze out of us.

As for McCain claiming that he will cut taxes more than Obama, just how he proposes to do that while raising taxes to pay for his health care plan is a mystery, I'll bet, even to his economic advisors.

I suggest you read the article and think carefully about how you place your vote next month.