I have a serious question, and I'm curious why it hasn't been asked...

[jsbowden]

McCain's health care plan is a 5k tax credit.

My question is this:

How does this help families who are so poor they already don't pay taxes?

Seriously. Why hasn't one single reporter asked him or Palin this question? A five thousand dollar tax credit isn't going to give them the money to buy health insurance. We're talking about people who just worry about making rent and eating. And are the folks most likely to end up sick.

If someone has, and I missed it, what was the answer?

The rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor...
U2

Comments

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

*shrug*

Don't ask me; it's a damn silly tinker-round-the-edges policy whose only merit so far as I'm concerned is that it doesn't create some Godawful nationalized healthcare system that doesn't, by virtue of being ours, have the convenient props that the current ones depend on.

You want sensible healthcare reform? Decouple routine/chronic/elective from acute care (this in itself should greatly reduce insurance premiums, not to mention reducing the paperwork load at physician offices sufficiently as to lower the cost of basic health care in the process), shift routine/chronic/elective over to a pay-as-you-go/health savings account model rather than an insurance model, deregulate in all the places where regulation inhibits this (like that pus-awful New Jersey law that charges you extra if you want to pay cash rather than rely on insurance) - in fact, revise insurance regulation heavily to concentrate on ensuring that health insurers deliver on their promises, and throw out a lot of the market-impeding crap and regulatory burden, including most of the regulation that fights actuarial reality, and lastly, do something to inform foreign monopsony pharmaceutical purchasers that they are actively harming American patients by driving prices up, and that they can either knock it the hell off, or we'll make their lives not so easy, too.

And admit that in the absence of Pure Fucking Magic, it is not possible to have a perfect system. Everyone rations. Let's not pretend we're doing anything but arguing over how we do it.

For a start.