Health Care Plans

As someone who recently married a Type 1 diabetic, I find the health care plans offered by the candidates extremely interesting. I mean, no matter who wins, they're going to try to enact their health care policy, so I should read up on both.

My verdict: If John McCain wins, we'll need to leave the country and become expats to freaking afford insurance.

My reasoning: McCain's plan centers around taxing the money your employer pays towards your insurance, and giving that money to the health insurance companies as a subsidy for an individually purchased health care plan. The problems with that?
1. With an employer-based group health care plan, 9% of your premiums go towards administrative costs. With individual plans, that goes up to 30%. 30%! That's the amount of your money being used for administrative costs.
2. With an employer-based health care plan, they can't turn you away. The very worst they can do (and it's still pretty bad) is deny you coverage for your specific pre-existing condition. Oh, by the way, Obama wants to get rid of their ability to do that.
3. With the tax on employers for health care, many employers are going to stop offering it, and let their employees fend for themselves in the private market. The problem with that is that private health care plans will either laugh at Brent when he applies for coverage (it's actually happened) or charge ruinous premiums.
McCain's solution is to make High Risk Pools, for people who can't get private insurance on their own. The problem with this is that those pools are widely panned by health care experts as providing worse coverage and higher prices... if a person can even get into a pool. Many states with pools like this often have a waiting list.

As for cost, I've seen reports that show Obama's will actually save money in the long run, and I've seen reports that it will cost a ton of money. Most reports lists McCain's plan costing more than what we're spending now, but the cost they give varies widely.

McCain's plan is widely panned as being harder on people with lower income and people with pre-existing conditions, such as asthma, type 1 (or 2, I suppose) diabetes, a previous history with cancer, etc.

After spending my morning reading about health care plans, I'm shocked if anyone who lists health care as a top priority can in good conscious vote for McCain. I guess they hide their head in the sand on health care issues and vote for him based on Iraq or... umm... dudes kissing is icky? Planned Parenthood is a multi-million dollar abortion industry? Both untrue, but you know how people can get. BTW, McCain was pro-choice in 2000. Funny how he switched his position because it was unpopular with conservative Republican voters in that primary. What a maverick.

But yeah. Even the current messed up state of health care right now is better for us than what McCain is proposing. We simply won't be able to afford insurance for Brent under his policy. Oh well, I guess Brent should do what Sarah Palin suggested and "just live healthier." Because that's really going to cure Type 1 diabetes...



Links I used:
http://www.familiesusa.org/election-2008/report/

http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/policy/federal/presidentialrace/comparison2008.html

http://www.health08.org/sidebyside.cfm