Daily Register - Democrats Blast McCain Health Plan

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Daily Register - Democrats Blast McCain Health Plan

Providing health care for all was at the center of a bid for local voters' support as two Democratic Party representatives drubbed the proposals of Republican presidential candidate John McCain and trumpeted Democratic candidate Barack Obama's ideas Wednesday.

Second District U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Madison brought her colleague Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., to a town hall meeting at the Baraboo Civic Center. About 50 people showed up to hear them talk about contending ideas on how to make sure Americans get the health care they need.

McDermott said he has been a practicing physician, began dealing with health care in the Washington legislature in 1972 and then faced the issue in the U.S. House of Representatives. He said he has long promoted the idea of universal health care.

Most of the rest of the developed counties, including Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland for example, all have systems that provide universal health care for their citizens, he said.

"I've seen the ups and downs and I've seen the problems that have developed as we've gotten more and more people uninsured in this country," he said.

The Democrats attacked McCain's proposal to provide each family with a $5,000 tax credit to help them pay for their health care. They pointed out McCain would pay for the credit by taxing people's employer-provided health care as income, so the worker and employer must pay income and Social Security taxes on it.

McDermott said experts have estimated taxing health-care plans will result in some businesses dropping their employee health programs and force about 20 million people to search for health insurance on their own. Buying health insurance as a single person or family is much more expensive than getting it through a group program, they said.

"If you're going out there on your own, it is really difficult," he said. "If you're over 30 years old, almost everybody has something, a pre-existing (health condition). The minute you have a pre-existing condition, the price goes out of sight."

Baldwin said more than 415,000 people in Wisconsin could lose their group health insurance under McCain's proposals and might not find a health-insurance company ready to accept them.

"I hear it over and over again," Baldwin said, "someone who had breast cancer or someone who had a childhood illness, and when they try to buy individual health-care policies, they're rejected."

For some families, McCain's plan means the tax on their employer-provided health care will cost them more than the $5,000 tax credit they get back, Baldwin said. Also, the tax credit does not go to the family, but instead goes straight to their insurance provider, she said.

The U.S. health-care system spends more money per person than any other country in the world, Baldwin said. Yet, Americans do not have the best health in the world. McCain's proposals will not do anything to reduce health-care costs, she said.

Obama proposes to reduce health-care costs by having the federal government negotiate with drug companies to reduce the costs of patients' prescriptions, as it does now for veterans, Baldwin said. He wants to save money and increase the safety of medical care with electronic health records.

McDermott said Obama proposes that people who have a health-insurance plan they like should simply keep what they have. If a person doesn't like their health-care options or simply can't find a health-insurance company that will accept them, the government would provide an insurance plan for them.

"There's nobody going to be forced into anything," he said. "If you can't get (insurance), there's going to be another plan and it will be very much like the program federal employees have, in that there will be choices of programs you can buy into. And there will be help for people to buy into it," McDermott said.

The nation should provide health care as a matter of providing for "the common good," McDermott said.

"Barack's plan really works on the idea that there is a common good and we should work together to take care of one another," he said. Baldwin and McDermott stressed the importance of having fellow Democrat Obama elected chief executive as the best way to promote access to health care.

"It is very exciting for someone like me to have someone like Barack Obama appear and put it right up on top of his domestic agenda," McDermott said.

There is no way to have a "real democracy" without making sure everybody has health care, he said.

Baldwin said she is optimistic that the Congress will establish some sort of universal health plan when a new president and legislators are in office after the election.

"That optimism does rest on electing Barack Obama as our next president on Nov. 4," she said.

Calls to the Sauk County McCain/Palin campaign and Wisconsin Republican Party for comment were not returned.

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