by Seth Michaels, Apr 4, 2008

So, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) didn’t join Florida workers at yesterday’s roundtable in Jacksonville, Fla., and opted for a $2,300-a-plate fundraiser instead.

If he’d shown up, he could have learned a lot about the realities of America’s health care crisis. Instead, the workers had to take their message to him, standing outside his fundraiser and asking for a better plan to fix the broken health care system.

Ken Carter, a teacher and a member of the Clay County Education Association, is one of millions who struggles with health care costs. He says that McCain isn’t offering the solutions real people need. 

Every year, our healthcare benefits are chipped away more. We need healthcare for all, and nothing less. Sen. McCain’s plan doesn’t deliver.

Fran Benso, a retiree, said McCain’s voting record on Medicare and Medicaid is particularly disappointing.

Retired workers are often confused and unable to deal with the intricacies of healthcare today. When policies change and premiums go up, retirees can’t afford to pay the increase and are left in the cold. Sen. McCain needs to hear how much retired workers need help now.

This is the second AFL-CIO worker roundtable that McCain has skipped.

It’s particularly galling for McCain to ignore these Florida workers because it’s clear that the health care plan he’s proposed ignores the reality of our health care crisis. As The Boston Globe reports, McCain’s campaign is “scrambling” to figure out how to spin a disastrous plan that won’t cut costs, won’t cover more people and would raise taxes on employers and employees alike, pushing workers out of job-based plans and leaving them at the mercy of the private insurance market.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Sen. John Edwards, this week raised the issue that McCain’s plan won’t require insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions, which means many of us will be left without coverage. Cancer survivors like Edwards, and yes, McCain, were he not in the Senate, would have no guarantees that they’d be able to get insurance. (McCain’s years in government mean he’s spent decades in Congress with government-funded, comprehensive health care coverage.)

Princeton Economist Paul Krugman has looked at McCain’s health care plan and McCain’s campaign response to Edwards. His conclusion? It’s “nonsense on multiple levels” and “completely wrongheaded.” McCain’s health care plan, Krugman says, won’t cover more people and won’t cut costs.

There’s no reason to believe in these alleged cost reductions. Insurance companies do try to hold down “medical losses”—the industry’s term for what happens when an insurer actually ends up having to honor its promises by paying a client’s medical bills. But they don’t do this by promoting cost-effective medical care.

Instead, they hold down costs by only covering healthy people, screening out those who need coverage the most—which was exactly the point Mrs. Edwards was making. They also deny as many claims as possible, forcing doctors and hospitals to spend large sums fighting to get paid.

This flaw in the health care system isn’t just a statistic—it shows up in real people’s lives. Read any of the more than 7,000 stories submitted in the AFL-CIO’s 2008 Health Care for America Survey and you’ll see how large-scale public policy failures can turn into personal tragedy.

On health care, McCain’s proven the same thing he’s shown when he talks about trade or the housing crisis: he just doesn’t get it. And he’s not interested in listening to the workers who are bearing the consequences.

After seven years of an administration that won’t listen to working families, do we really need four more years of McSame?

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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