Showing You Care
SHOWING YOU CARE....Harold Meyerson notes the lack of substance from the current crop of Republican presidential candidates:
President Giuliani, Romney, McCain or Thompson can reliably be counted on to be against whatever Clinton is for. Beyond that, if we total up their domestic and economic policy proposals, they intend to do almost nothing at all.I thought maybe Meyerson was being unfair. So I went to Mitt Romney's website to look at his healthcare plan. Here it is: "The health of our nation can be improved by extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms." That's the whole thing. The rest of the page has a pair of quotes from two years ago, a single short video taken at a campaign event, and a couple of outside links. Sounds like it's a real priority for him, isn't it?Romney will punt to the states the problem of the decreasing willingness of employers to provide health insurance. Giuliani says everybody should just buy their own policies — and if the insurance companies don't want to sell to the sick or middle-aged, that's just too bad. John McCain focuses on the rising costs of treating chronic diseases rather than the declining level of coverage. Fred Thompson wants to take a whack at Medicare.