McCain wants our health care system to be like our banking system

Yes, you read that title correctly. There are so many reasons John McCain shouldn’t be president. Put this one near the top of the list. Via Paul Krugman:

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American [It's a pdf] in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Okay. Our financial system was on the verge of collapse because there was not enough oversight and regulation. That’s the kind of health care system John McCain wants for you.

John McCain doesn’t understand how the nation’s private health insurance system — or doesn’t understand how it works for most of us. He gets government run health care, which serves him well. Richard Kirsch, from Health Care for America Now (HCA), issued this statement about McCain’s health care plan yesterday — shortly before we knew McCain wanted the system to be run like the banking system. But, even before that, we knew that McCain was just plain wrong about health care:

McCain’s health care plan is a sham. But he wouldn’t understand that because he doesn’t have to navigate the independent, unregulated, bureaucratic insurance market.

See, Senator McCain enjoys the government health care he keeps attacking. He has coverage through the Veterans Administration, which is government run, socialized medicine. He’s covered under the Federal Employees Health Benefit System, which is government paid for, regulated private insurance. And as a senior citizen, Senator McCain is eligible for Medicare which is government health insurance. All these allow McCain to “see [his] doctor fairly frequently” as he told reporters in March.

And yet he believes none of these solutions are right for the rest of America, many of whom can’t afford to see their doctor at all.

If McCain wants the health insurance system to be like the banking system, he wants a government takeover.

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