Sick in America? You’re on Your Own (Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director CNA)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/03/14/sick-in-america-youre-on-your-own/

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), knows what ails the nation’s sick health care system. The AFL-CIO Executive Council member says Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s health proposals don’t even come close to a cure.



In this crosspost from Huffington Post, DeMoro dissects McCain’s health care plans and finds they are “grounded in the failed health policies of the Bush administration.” She says McCain’s health care slogan should be, “Don’t Get Sick in America, or You’re on Your Own.”

With all the fireworks over health care in the Democratic primaries, John McCain’s health care views should be considered in the context of the tanking economy.

Household mortgage and consumer debt now add up to an unfathomable $12 to $13 trillion, and millions of American families are faced with foreclosure of their homes.

Even before this meltdown, one in six insured Americans were having “substantial problems” paying their medical bills, not to mention the 47 million with no health coverage and little prospect of getting it.

The constellation of foreclosures and staggering consumer debt with unpayable medical bills is a chilling prospect. The 1930s images of soup kitchens and Hoovervilles come to mind. We might have to start talking about McCainvilles with his open embrace of market-based approaches that will offer little relief to those staring into the abyss.

Nowhere is that more evident than in his health care proposal, which is grounded in the failed health policies of the Bush administration and its advocacy of market-based schemes like high-deductible health savings accounts.

McCain’s main health care ideas are increased corporate competition to supposedly limit rising costs and tax credits to encourage the uninsured to buy insurance. Neither will do any more than perpetuate the dismal status quo.

Once-a-year tax credits mainly help the healthy and well-off, the same people who benefited from the Bush tax cuts he supported. Those who need coverage most will still be unable to afford premiums that now average over $12,000 per family, not including skyrocketing deductibles, co-pays, drug and hospital charges, and other fees.

FULL story at link.

[area51]

1. kick. (n/t)