ISSUE: Health Care

New Studies Report Wide Disparity in Health Care Plans

It seems the numbers to pay attention to here are the number of currently uninsured (47 million) that would be covered under each candidates health care plans.

Obama: 34 million
McCain: 5 million

Clearly a pretty huge difference. Neither health care plan is perfect, but one surely does more to help the uninsured in America. McCain's plan, which would include taxing employer sponsored health care benefits, would also cause some people to be dropped from their current health insurance. People have said it's basically a plan that would reward young, healthy individuals while still making it hard for people with existing conditions to get health care.

It seems to me that in this country when it comes to health care, like most of the problems we face, we focus on the symptoms and not the actual cause. Our new health care system (and I admit I am no expert on health care policy, this is just one man's opinion) seems like it should be based on preventative care so less people end up getting sick in the first place. Currently it feels like people avoid going to the doctor like the plague because of the costs associated with it and the mentality in this country that you only need to go if you are really sick. To me it seems like it would make more sense to have people make regular visits to monitor their health and make sure they are eating and living right in order to stave off common ailments in this country like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Our nation spends so much money caring for people that are already sick. We might be able to save a lot of money by making sure people live a little more healthy and catch possible trouble spots early on before they become an even worse (and more expensive) problem.

Another thing that irks me about the current system is that even though the government is one of the biggest customers of the pharmaceutical companies (through Medicare, etc), they don't haggle on price. Once again, another example of a government that preaches "free market" not actually abiding by free market principles when it comes to one of the industries that heavily lobbies (and funds the campaigns of) the people that run our country. No wonder health care is so expensive in this country. Big Pharma profits out the kazoo and the people suffer. Sometimes I really question if we should change the Constitution to say "We the Corporations" instead of "We the People".