McAuliffe visits town to pitch Obama health plan
The health care plans of presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain would steer the country in drastically different directions, former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe told an audience of about 30 persons gathered at The Prizery Monday.
McAuliffe, who served as national chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign before switching his support to Obama, made a swing through Southside Monday to talk up Obama’s health care proposals. McAuliffe said one million more Virginians would be insured if the Democratic candidate’s plan is enacted.
“Everybody in this country should be entitled to health care. That’s his basic premise,” said McAuliffe, who is considering a run for governor next year.
The longtime Clinton confidante and McLean, Va. resident said that since the last time Democrats tried to implement a universal health care plan — back in 1993, when Hillary Clinton led the failed initiative — the number of Americans without coverage has grown by 17 million. Today some 47 million Americans do not have health insurance, a state of affairs which Obama’s plan will remedy, McAuliffe said.
The Obama plan would create cost-saving health insurance pools and provide tax credits to families and small businesses that cannot afford premiums. Obama also proposes to lower the cost of prescription drugs by negotiating discounts with pharmaceutical providers in the Medicare system and by allowing the importation of safe generic drugs from Canada and other countries. Obama would require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and allow individuals to purchase insurance from the same plan that Congress has.
“If it’s good enough for members of Congress, it’s good enough for you,” said McAuliffe.
McAuliffe said Obama’s plan also will drive down costs by reigning in unnecessary medical procedures and emphasizing preventive care. He said a key is creating incentives so providers profit by keeping their patients well, as opposed to when they get sick.
“Rewarding hospitals and doctors [for wellness] is a big part of Senator Obama’s health care plan,” said McAuliffe.
Visiting town on the same day that stock exchanges plunged following the House of Representatives’ rejection a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, McAuliffe said average Americans are entitled to protections from the ups-and-downs of the marketplace.
Without federal insurance of bank depositors, the American finance system would “have been wiped out,” he said.
Patients need similar protections, said McAuliffe, pointing to the number of personal bankruptcies caused by the lack of health insurance coverage.
John McCain’s plan for health care would leave people even more vulnerable to failures of the marketplace, McAuliffe argued.
The linchpin of McCain’s plan is a refundable tax credit — $2,500 for individuals, $5,000 for families — to offset the cost of purchasing private insurance. McCain’s plan also promotes greater use of tax-free medical savings accounts for paying out-of-pocket health care costs.
But McCain would also, for the first time, tax health care benefits that individuals get through their companies. Experts say the plan would weaken the employer-based system of health coverage and lead to more people purchasing plans individually — an outcome the McCain campaign says will promote competition and cut costs.
McAuliffe argued that it’s a fantasy to believe that individuals and families — especially those with a history of poor health — can buy insurance for $2,500 or $5,000 a year.
“I have five children and my premiums are $1,900 a month,” said McAuliffe.
With McCain’s plan, “you’re going to have to pay taxes on whatever health care benefits your employer provides to you. Most people don’t know that.”
McAuliffe speculated that the reason McCain has offered the proposal is because he believes the free market can solve the problem of the uninsured. But events of the past few weeks should call into question the wisdom of that approach.
“Seven hundred billion of your taxpayer money is going to Wall Street because people there gambled with their money,” he said.
McAuliffe said he supported the Treasury’s plan to buy up $700 billion in toxic mortgage-backed securities because the alternative was seeing credit lines dry up and the financial markets devastated. That would have severe repercussions on other segments of the economy, leaving policy makers will little other choice than to support the bailout, he said.
McAuliffe did not address reports that he will run for governor next year, but on Tuesday at a health care forum in Roanoke he said he would make a decision on a run after the Nov. 4 election. If he jumps into the race McAuliffe will join two Democrats, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Brian Moran of Fairfax and State Senator Creigh Deeds of Bath, who have already announced.