Sunday, February 17, 2008

McCain and Health Care

I hit the McCain web site to see if he had a plan for addressing the Medicare funding crisis. I found the following statement on his health care web page:

Promote competition throughout the health care system - between providers and among alternative treatments.

Depending on what he means by this, I either support it or think that it is a waste of resources. There are some alternative treatments (eg chiropracty for pinched back nerves) which have been shown to be beneficial. There are others that have not been shown to be worth the money. I'd hate to spend tax money (or my insurance premiums) paying for junk science like laetril treatments.

Here was his statement on Medicare:

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.

Everything in the statement is factually true, but I don't see any meat in the form of a real proposal. Maybe that's unfair to expect of a presidential candidate, but I never said that I was fair.