4-29-08, 9:25 am
John McCain visited Miami Children's Hospital April 28 where he no doubt scared some babies while attempting to kiss them. His main purpose for being there was to give an impression that he understands the health care issue, but he managed only to underscore the fact that he has no plan to solve America's health care crisis.
After politely listening to a few voters talk about serious problems with the health care system, McCain rejected government involvement in providing health care and pushed his plan which would impose a new tax on health care benefits. Unfortunately for McCain's presidential hopes, we have arrived at a moment in history when insisting that the free market can ensure that children get access to health care is belied by the fact that because there has been only limited intervention, limits championed by McCain and his Republican Party, nearly 10 million children lack coverage.
While at the Miami Children's hospital, McCain appeared to campaign against his own Senate record of blocking increased access for children's health care.
In 2007, McCain opposed reauthorizing S-CHIP and providing insurance for millions of additional uninsured children. Before casting his vote, McCain claimed the reauthorization bill would have covered too many children. The S-CHIP reauthorization would have helped provide health care coverage to 3 to 4 million of the nation's 10 million uninsured children.
Two years earlier McCain basically said tax breaks for the rich were more important to him than providing insurance for children when he voted to block a 'sense of the Senate' motion that said the Senate should not a enact a cut in the capital gains tax for the richest Americans until additional funding for S-CHIP could be provided.
Last year's vote against children's health insurance wasn't the first for McCain either. In 1997, McCain voted with the tobacco lobby to block a measure that would have used additional tobacco taxes to pay for children's health insurance.
in 1995, McCain voted to eliminate a children's vaccine program that provided discounted or free vaccines for the purpose of increasing immunization rates.
That same year he voted for a Republican budget bill that would have cut guaranteed coverage for preventative, primary and hospital care for about 18 million children under Medicaid.
In the eighth decade of his life and nearing the end of the third decade of his career in Washington and with a strong record of voting against health care programs, it is a funny time for McCain to suddenly claim an interest in children's health care.
As McCain tries to find ways to make his lack of a health plan more palatable for Americans, who say that health care is one of their top concerns this elections cycle, it is increasingly clear that McCain plans to continue the Bush administration's policy of ignoring the health care crisis.
--Reach Joel Wendland at
