Senator John McCain does not have a formal plan for health care reform, like Senator Clinton's or Senator Obama's proposals. However, he believes that reform efforts should be guided by three principles:
- Our system should only pay for quality. Senator McCain believes that rising health care costs are the biggest problem with our system now, and demanding quality is one way to contain these costs. Americans should not be paying for unnecessary or ineffective care. McCain would improve quality in the following ways:
- Promoting health savings accounts to give Americans more control over their health choices. This will discourage unnecessary expenses and improve satisfaction.
- Improving access to care for veterans by allowing them to seek care at any medical facility, not just VA hospitals.
- Passing medical liability reform to eliminate lawsuits against providers following accepted best practices.
- Requiring coordinated care to ensure that health improvement efforts are not fragmented or working at cross-purposes. Consolidated billing will minimize administrative costs.
- Requiring all healthcare providers to fully disclose fees and anticipated outcomes to ensure accountability and transparency.
- Creating a national insurance marketplace, as opposed to our current state-based system.
- Encouraging competition in the drug marketplace through safe reimportation, faster introduction of generic drugs, and other means.
- Ensuring that federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid focus more on chronic disease management without adding additional unfunded entitlements.
- Our system should ensure that multiple and diverse coverage options are available to all Americans. McCain believes that an ideal insurance marketplace would offer so many options to each American that they would never be afraid of losing the plan they currently have. To achieve this, McCain would:
- Offer tax credits of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families.
- Allow states wide latitude to develop ways to help individuals who require expensive health care.
- Create a nationwide health insurance marketplace and allow Americans to buy coverage from any insurer, not just the ones in their state.
- Americans should take personal responsibility for improving their health. McCain believes that there is more that Americans could be doing to prevent chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. He would like parents to take the lead in teaching their children about healthful lifestyle habits. They should also be responsible for providing insurance coverage for their children.
Overall, McCain's ideas on health care reform are centered around cost containment. He is alarmed by the total amount our country is expected to spend on health care in coming years and believes the government must act to prevent this from happening. He would like to reduce health care spending in the hopes that it will help to create a more robust insurance marketplace that can offer affordable coverage to all Americans.
McCain believes that much of our health care spending is excessive and unnecessary. He supports consumer-directed health plans that would give Americans more of a financial stake in the cost of their care. He would encourage consumers to play a more active role in their care and to avoid spending more than is absolutely necessary to ensure positive health outcomes.
In McCain's opinion, government-imposed mandates on coverage and benefits limit the options available to consumers and drive up costs. Thus, voters can expect that he would oppose these limitations. In fact, he believes that the answer to our health care crisis lies not with the government, but with the American people. McCain would like for Americans to trust themselves to face the challenge of improving their health and achieving financial security.
Source:
John McCain 2008. "John McCain on Health Care" Des Moines Rotary Lunch. October 11, 2007.
