McCain Health-care Plan Assailed
A progressive group pushing for health-care reform – Health Care for America Now – took a swing at Republican presidential nominee John McCain Monday, telling him to “stop lying about” Democratic rival Barack Obama’s health-care plan.
The group took issue with McCain’s characterization last week that Obama’s plan would "force small businesses to cut jobs and reduce wages and force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor."
"Sen. Obama’s heath care plan offers the American people and American business a choice. His plan allows individuals to stay with the private insurance they have now, choose a new health care plan similar to the one Congress has or opt into a new public plan so we are no longer left at the mercy of the private insurance industry,” the group’s national campaign manager, Richard Kirsch, said in a statement.
“His plan includes lowering health care costs for small business and allowing employers to offer health insurance by paying for it as a percentage of their payroll rather than continue to feed into the current system where premiums are completely disconnected from what a business can afford.”
Kirsch also knocked McCain’s plan saying, “McCain's health care plan, which proposes taxing your health-care benefits at work and eliminating what little regulation already exists by allowing people to purchase across state lines, will raise costs and lower consumer protections.”
The Republican National Committee defended McCain’s statement
"Special-interest groups like HCAN support Obama’s plan to create new health-care bureaucracies and bigger government. But average patients and doctors don’t want a big government-run system with more bureaucrats and burdensome taxes,” said RNC spokesman Alex Conant.
“The facts are clear, he went on. “Obama’s plan would hurt small businesses and force families into a government-run health care system where bureaucrats stand between patients and doctors. John McCain's health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance,"