Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Robbing Peter to pay Paul
John McCain has criticized Barack Obama's health care plan for its expense, and argued that his own proposal will be budget-neutral. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal gives a little insight into how he's going to accomplish that.
According to the article, the McCain plan will cut Medicare and Medicaid spending to the tune of $1.3 trillion over 10 years. The cuts will be achieved by eliminating Medicare fraud (a worthy goal), increasing premiums for wealthier seniors (not an idea that's likely to win Floridian votes), and "reforming payment policies to lower the overall cost of care," to quote the WSJ. That last part sounds most relevant to physicians, and distressingly ambiguous. Is it money for the patient-centered medical home or longer do-not-pay lists? Hard to tell from the platform on McCain's Web site, but it looks like maybe a little bit of both.
Labels: presidential campaign
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
3:33 PM
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Thursday, September 25, 2008
Are there any undecided voters out there?
If you haven't gotten your fill of the presidential candidates on health care in my Campaign Trail columns (here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), you might be interested in the current issue of the New England Journal.
Barack Obama and John McCain each wrote a piece about their health care plans, and while they both spout a lot of platitudes (According to McCain, "every American should have access to quality and affordable coverage of their choice" while Obama believes "all Americans should have high-quality, affordable medical care that improves health"), they do eventually explain the basic precepts of their plans. And if you prefer your campaigning negative, operatives (er, I mean, health experts) have written attack pieces on the Republican and Democratic plans.
And if you still haven't made your decision after that, there's some kind of video on the NEJM Web site with more health care campaigning. If you watch it, let me know how it ends. I was afraid my head would explode if I had to hear or read the words "high quality and affordable" one more time.
Update: The Kaiser Family Foundation (who must know more about the candidates and health care than anyone else on earth) just released an online tool that compares Obama and McCain on a whole series of health-related issues going far beyond insurance coverage.
Labels: presidential campaign
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
4:23 PM
0 Comments
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