August 29, 2008 03:31 AM UTC

McCain Camp: There are no uninsured Americans

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• by: Danny the Red (hair)

WTF?  Put this in the category with $5 million a year to be rich, I don’t know how many homes I own, my wife spends $500,000 a month on credit cards, people facing foreclosure should just get a 2nd job and the economy is fundamentally strong.

John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

Mr. Goodman’s analysis drew a sharp response from the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based think tank focusing on poverty issues. “That is not the same thing as having health insurance,” said Eva Deluna, a budget analyst for the center. People without insurance are less likely to seek care, and when they do, the cost to the health system is greater, she said.

According to Mr. Goodman, only people who are denied care are truly uninsured – everyone who gets care is effectively insured by some mechanism. “So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care,” he said.

http://www.dallasnews.com/shar…

One of the undiscussed policy issues is how radical McCain’s healthcare plan is.

McCain’s plan would dismantle the employer based healthcare system and leave each individual to seek coverage on their own, subject to their own preexisting conditions and their own ability to read, understand and compare the insurance contracts created by the insurance company lawyers.

When combined with the right to sell insurance plans from unregulated insurance friendly states into consumer friendly states every consumer will be on their own.  They will face illness without the help of ANY institutional support against batteries of Insurance company lawyers.

Though it is unclear because McCain keeps moving the ball, for his plan to be revenue neutral there would be a massive tax increase on workers making less than 100K and no tax increase on those making more than 100K even though lower/middle income workers would pay for the tax breaks of high income workers.  By eliminating the tax break for companies, the income would pass through to workers directly and increase workers FICA/FUTA taxes resulting in a tax increase for every American.

Just another example of McCain’s plan: good for the middle class…that makes $5 million a year…not so good for the rest of us.