McCain's Florida Strategy, Cut Medicare

by a trillion

Does this guy want to win

From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones


The Obama campaign kept the focus on healthcare Monday, this time seeking to draw attention to an article in today's Wall Street Journal that outlined how John McCain’s proposals would cut funding for Medicare and Medicaid in order to keep his plan budget-neutral.

The Journal reported that McCain would cut Medicare and Medicaid funding by $1.3 trillion dollars over the next decade -- based on estimates by independent analysts -- and use those savings to fund tax credits to help people purchase health coverage. The paper said the campaign had not given a specific figure for the cuts, but did not dispute the analysts' estimate.

Two battleground state surrogates, former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, hosted the call. Both states have large populations of elderly voters.

Medicare and Medicaid serve seniors, the disabled and the poor. Graham said McCain’s plan would be disastrous for the oldest, the poorest and the sickest Americans, and would hurt state budgets.

“This plan would be a disaster. It would cut Medicare and Medicaid by over 20 percent over the next 10 years. It would dramatically reduce quality of health care for older Americans and the poorest and sickest of Americans, while at the same time adding to the burden of state governments,” he said. “Under Medicaid there is a set of benefits that are legally required of the state to provide. If the federal government reduces its level of support then that is just more of a burden that states – which are already in an extremely overextended basis – will have to pick up.”

Casey said some 2.2 million older Pennsylvanians served by Medicare and 1 million children served by Medicaid would be adversely affected by McCain’s proposal.

“What this health care plan indicates is that John McCain is out of touch with what Americans are going through. People are struggling as they never have before with this economy,” he said. “You have to wonder about what John McCain and his running mate, what their priorities are for America. Privatizing Social Security, gutting Medicare, deregulating health care is not putting country first, it’s putting radical, misguided, reckless ideology ahead of the interests of your country and ahead of the interests of families in America, especially older citizens and very vulnerable Americans.”

Monday’s conference call came on the heels of a weekend during which the senator repeatedly bashed McCain on the stump for health care proposals he said could spell the end of the country’s employer-based health care system and could leave many Americans unable to afford coverage.

Graham said Obama would try to improve the employee-based health care system rather than “blowing it up” as McCain would do, while Casey said McCain’s plan to tax employer-provided health benefits showed he was “not living in the real world” and said he would “like to see John McCain survive without his government-provided health insurance.”

A focus on the economy has helped Obama to gain support in several states and put his rival on the defensive even in solidly Republican states that George Bush won in the last two elections, places like Florida and North Carolina. Now the Democratic nominee is seeking to expand his discussion of pocketbook issues to health care, arguing that reform of the system is necessary to shore up the economy and help businesses compete.