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McCain Would Slash Medicare |
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This week, in the midst of Sen. John McCain’s misleading assaults on Sen. Barack Obama, his campaign let slip yet another revelation of exactly where their priorities are. One of McCain’s top advisers this week said that as president, McCain would cut $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid.
That’s “trillion.” With a “T.”
More than 10 years, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin told the Wall Street Journal, McCain would pay for the high costs of his health care proposal by taking a hatchet to health care coverage for the elderly, people with disabilities and lower-income families. A Center for American Progress study finds that McCain’s plan would force big cuts in benefits or eligibility for these vulnerable populations.
McCain’s call for radical cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will undermine their vital role in our health care system, putting affordable health care out of reach for millions of seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families, and driving up the cost of health insurance for everyone else.
And why does the McCain campaign support undermining this pillar of retirement security? To pay for a “tax credit” in McCain’s health care plan that amounts to a subsidy for big insurance companies. (Maybe McCain thinks the $2 billion in tax cuts he would give the insurance companies isn’t enough.)
Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, calls McCain’s Medicare plans “terrible news” for seniors already beset by rising costs and economic anxiety.
Medicare, like Social Security, is one of our nation’s greatest success stories. Generations of seniors have been able to better afford their doctor visits and prescription drugs. Medicare works, and as part of national health care reform, we need to strengthen Medicare—not decimate it. As the McCain health care plan would also cause many employers to drop retiree health care, a stronger Medicare program would be needed more than ever.
This major threat to Medicare is the dirty little secret John McCain and his team of lobbyists didn’t want us to know about.
When it comes to retirement security and health care, McCain’s plans are as bafflingly out of touch as his Senate voting record. He wants to put retirement at risk by gambling Social Security in volatile markets. He opposes expanding health care for children and has opposed enabling Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. He wants to create a new health care tax that could push millions out of their benefits, and his so-called tax credit would cover less than half of what an average family premium would cost. And McCain wants to pay for it all by demolishing the health coverage millions of retirees depend on.
In contrast, Obama has a strong record of protecting retirees and their health care, and he’s pledged to fight benefit cuts in Social Security and Medicare. He’s proposed a health care plan that cuts costs for families and gives more people access to affordable, high-quality coverage.
It’s clear that Obama understands that in tough economic times, we need to keep working families and retirees secure by making sure we have a strong and stable health care system. McCain thinks the right answer is to push more and more people out of their current coverage and leave them, young and old alike, at the mercy of the insurance companies.
He just doesn’t get it.
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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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