Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Those Worst Off, Pt.3 – How far have we gotten?

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As yet, Mr. McCain has not earmarked where these health insurance funds will come from, other than taking away from other programs. With his pledge of a balanced federal budget by 2013, he is almost certainly faced with reducing spending growth. All this would seem to make the viability of his health insurance plan tenuous, at best. The easy escape route, of course, is that there is no cap on what the applicant would be required to pay for health insurance. There is little emphasis on ‘affordability’, which is the plight of so many right now.

By sharp contrast, there is another camp. Along with strong coalitions and senate groups, the Obama campaign is directly addressing this issue. ‘Affordability’ has always been central in the Obama camp, but during the primaries, details were still preliminary, as was the actual presidential campaign itself. As the major campaign gears up, so does the need for viability that comes from detail. With the unification of the Democratic Party, ideas and values are being unified as well. Both democratic candidates took an early lead in offering the much higher, but realistic, cost projections of ‘affordable’ health insurance, as unpopular as they sounded to many. They weren’t hiding behind the ‘very preliminary shield’. The costs will be high. But no one, thus far, has come up with a more viable plan to cause the health insurance providers to accept ‘everyone’ regardless of health in an ‘affordable’ manner. So far, five of our states have come about half way, including New Jersey and New York. The only state to have arrived most of the way is Massachusetts.

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