In a recap of the second McCain‐Obama debate, Joe Klein offers his thoughts on the role of government generally and in health care in particular. Excerpts and comments follow:
Obama began his response with a simple declarative sentence: “I believe that health care is a right for every American.”
Health care is a bundle of goods and services. Treat health care like a “right,” and watch it disappear.
The rest of his answer could be used as a template for how to deal with a complex issue in a town‐hall debate. He began with a personal story: his mother, dying of cancer at age 53, having to fight her insurance company, trying to prove that her disease had not been a pre‐existing condition.
Obama has said his mother “had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs.” Neither candidate can claim that their health plan would have saved her life. But McCain can claim that the federal government created an employer‐based health insurance system that routinely strips people of coverage right before and right after they get sick. In its attacks on McCain’s health‐insurance tax credit, I haven’t once heard the Obama campaign acknowledge that McCain’s plan would have spared Obama’s mother that deathbed worry.
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