Presidential candidates on health care reform
Presidential candidates on health care reform:
Hillary Clinton:
…three things… …control and decrease costs… … improve quality. We can save money within the existing system. I am not ready to put new money into a system that doesn’t work until we’ve tried to figure out how to get the best outcomes from the money we already have.
Barack Obama:
…provide subsidies for those who can’t afford the group rates that are available. …control costs. The third thing is catastrophic insurance to help businesses and families avoid the bankruptcies that we’re experiencing all across the country and reduced premiums for families.
John Edwards:
Give people a choice, including a government choice; no pre- existing conditions — banned as a matter of law. And the law actually requires that every single American be covered.
John McCain:
Promises made to previous and current generations have placed the United States on an unsustainable budget pathway. Unchecked, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare obligations will grow as large as the entire federal budget is now in just a few decades. Without comprehensive bipartisan reform to America’s entitlement programs, the nation will be unable to meet the challenges of providing vital medical and social security assistance to future generations.
Mitt Romney:
The health of our nation can be improved by extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms.
Rudy Giuliani:
According to Jonine Bernstein, a Memorial Sloan-Kettering epidemiologist who was among more than 100 donors attending… (an April 26 fundraiser at the Yale Club in Manhattan), “He gave this analogy about plasma TVs. He said that in the very beginning plasma TVs were so expensive and only very few people could afford it. And now with greater volume and greater demand the price has dropped, and that could be a model for healthcare — in the sense of privatization of healthcare. That if the government keeps supporting the healthcare industry it would just crush us.”
Clinton, Obama and Edwards: April 26 debate in South Carolina:
http://www.wcnc.com/news/local/stories/wcnc-042607-krg-debate_part1.1023b3ba.html
McCain: John McCain 2008 website:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/4a3ab6fe-b025-42b1-815b-13c696a61908.htm
Romney: Romney for President website:
http://www.mittromney.com/Issue-Watch/Health_Care
Giuliani: The New York Observer, April 26:
http://www.observer.com/2007/rudy-iraq-just-pre-rudy-ny
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
The American people are ready for reform. What we now need is leadership.
Only one of these leading candidates has a serious proposal for reform, and that is John Edwards. Of other candidates, Dennis Kucinich has a proposal that is already before Congress, HR 676, which has 67 cosponsors in the House. In fact, HR 676, by providing affordable, comprehensive health care for everyone, is the golden standard against which all other proposals should be judged.
It’s past time for mere rhetoric. It’s time for real policies. Every candidate needs to step up to the plate with their specific proposals on how we can achieve health care justice for everyone in the United States. Refusal to do so should disqualify the candidate from our lists of serious contenders.
Plasma TVs? Get real!