John McCain’s Farewell To Florida

As I discussed earlier today, with less than a month to go, Obama is essentially ten or less electoral votes away from clinching the presidency.  Granted, anything can happen (a caveat I feel compelled to add due to my faith in jinx rules), but if we were to look at the electoral map from a strategic view, McCain has to seriously start looking at the remaining states in play and figure out how to shut virtually all of them down.

This is obviously not what was going through his mind, though, when he came up with his idea on how to fund his health care plan.

Frankly, I’ve always thought McCain’s healthcare plan was a bit of a mess.  His solution appeared to be to give everyone a tax credit that wouldn’t even buy them the same healthcare they’re getting through their employers.  In short, McCain’s plan would end up dropping people from healthcare rolls, and ultimately cost more than what we got going for us now.

Part of the disaster, though, was that this crap sandwich of a plan had to be paid for.  The Obama campaign assumed (largely due to some of the rhetoric coming from the McCain campaign) that this would have to be paid for by increasing taxes, or, more accurately, removing tax deductions.  But we now know exactly how the McCain campaign intends to pay for its already worthless health care plan:

First McCain said he would elimine the entire tax deduction for health insurance, in order to pay for his new tax credit. This would have paid for itself, but it would have done so by raising taxes on a lot of people.

Then McCain decided he was keeping part of the deduction after all. While he would be raising taxes on a very few people, he’d be lowering them for most. Of course, that would also have meant running much bigger deficits.

Now McCain is saying, no, no, he’s not going to increase the deficit with his health care plan. Instead, he’s going to pay for it by cutting Medicare and Medicaid–which, at the levels he’s discussing, might seriously weaken the program.

(bold added for emphasis)

So, McCain wants to pay for his craptacular health care plan by slashing spending of Medicare and Medicaid, both programs known to be notoriously complex and problematic.  They’re also greatly depended upon especially by seniors.

Seniors that also happen to make up a significant bloc in the Florida electorate.  I mean, if McCain wanted to lose Florida so bad, why not just come out strong for Social Security privatization?

Oh, wait…

One Response to “John McCain’s Farewell To Florida”

1. terry says:

   October 6, 2008 at 6:31 pm

   It’s almost like he’s trying to lose. What voters is he trying to entice by saying he’s cutting Medicare and Medicaid?? And then not being prepared to explain what exactly he’s going to cut.

   Reply