What a fantastic post. Doing research makes a difference I guess. The bar here has been raised!
Holy shit, well done Tony! You should be writing for Health Affairs.
I was going to point out halfway through that a family of 4 making $30K would easily fall within the 250% of poverty threshold test that most states use for their health entitlements, but you beat me to the punch.
And yeah, those entitlements are circling the drain as it is, and will definitely not survive a McCain administration.
For further reading, Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic has a great take on this as well. Link below.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/stor...80-
a7e817ddab6b
MF: That's a great article, especially w/r/t the insurability aspect of the argument, which is a big deal, obviously. So many unanswered questions...
Thanks, gents!
Good post.
It's stuff like this that makes me fairly confident that either Clinton or Obama will win in November. I know that the media prefer not to get into policy, and that when they do they reflexively take a "one side says this; the other says that; the truth is probably somewhere in between"-style pose of faux neutrality.
But you've demonstrated (in less time than a candidate at a debate would have to make the case) that McCain's policy idea, if enacted, will hurt you, the American voter. From what I've seen of his other dubious policy proposals, the same thing can be done to each of them. The ads practically write themselves, and either Clinton or Obama are more than capable of hitting on these issues in debates.
McCain's getting a free ride for the moment, but even factoring in the media fluffing he'll get his plans for what he'd do as President are so clearly awful that (coupled with escalating gas and food prices and let's not forget the war he wants to double down on) he's going to lose.
I'd also like to point out that these are best case scenario numbers--you're presuming that there are no pre-existing conditions and that the person looking for the insurance doesn't live in an area with a high cancer rate. And even then, it's an untenable plan.
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