It’s not hard to figure out what message is working best for Barack Obama – look at his ads. By an overwhelming margin, they are about health care.
The Democratic candidate has spent $113 million on political ads focused on health reform to date, eight times Sen McCain’s expenditure. Fully two-thirds of Obama’s ads have featured health care compared to one-eighth of McCain’s.
And that trend is accelerating, as Obama’s stance on health care has resonated with likely voters, he has pitched his health reform message almost exclusively – 86% of his recent ads focus on health care compared to 1.5% of McCain’s.
A substantial majority of likely voters is paying attention to the candidates’ positions on health care, and this is not good for McCain. According to a recent poll, 54% of voters are not confident he would make the right decisions about health care. This issue resonates particularly loudly among women, who make up a majority of the electorate.
McCain’s plan includes the elimination of the tax break for employer-funded coverage, a position that likely scares the hell out of many folks afraid that their bosses will use this as a reason to drop their health plans. With the press chock-full of stories about the high cost and lousy coverage offered by individual plans, coupled with stories of sleazy insurers canceling coverage for folks audacious enough to get sick, this is a losing position for McCain.
Health care won’t decide this election by itself. But what the candidates are saying about health care will be one of the major contributors to what looks like a big win by the Democrats and Obama.
Oct
24
Joe- I want to first thank you for posting these left sided opinions. Reading these day after day has brought me to research more in-depth on why I chose to support the opposite views.
I was just curious, since you are pro universal healthcare, does that mean you don’t mind giving your hard earn money to others that would rather live on the “government”? Now, I agree there are always exceptions, but come on
In June of 2008, Michelle Obama tells a crowd, “The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more. http://theobamafile.com/ObamaWife.htm
Obama’s state senate run also receives the support of Dr. Quentin Young, a neighbor of Obama’s and a long-time advocate of a single-payer, national health care system; Young is believed to be a member of the Communist Party of the USA, and had been active in Chicago socialist circles since the 1930s; in 1992 Young received from the Chicago Democratic Socialists its highest honor, the (Eugene) Debs Award; while in the Illinois State Senate, Obama supports Young’s single-payer health care program and introduces several bills in failed attempts to get it established. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Young and http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-file-15-socialist-octagenarians.html
What do you think about this: “Obama here is practicing one of the Rules for Radicals he learned from the works of the openly socialist revolutionary Saul Alinsky during Obama’s community organizer days: There is no need to be truthful when you are fighting for social justice. Make wild charges against your opponent and let him be stuck trying to explain the confusing details.” http://spectator.org/archives/2008/10/15/barack-obamas-health-care-lies
Everything in Obama’s health proposal involves higher government taxes,
higher government spending and more government regulation:
• His National Health Insurance Exchange — Americans could purchase health insurance
and choose among private insurers whose generous plans would cover all “essential” services — is a very expensive plan that the government (taxpayers) will pay for.
• Undoubtedly, this plan will be designed and priced to involve even more government subsidies, to get more people into the trap of socialized medicine, increasing the spending burden further.
• His plan would reimburse employer health plans for a portion of the catastrophic costs they incur above a threshold; but this really means that taxpayers would pay for the high costs of all employer plans above an unspecified threshold.
• Obama’s regulations would also require all plans to be community rated — everyone has to be charged the same premium, regardless of illness or costs when they first sign up.
Just some food for thought.
there are so many contrived, non-germane, and just plain wrong statements in this comment one has to be impressed. Who cares if one of Obama’s neighbors was a communist seventy years ago? How does a benefit plan require higher taxes? And what precisely is ‘left leaning’?
Citations from the American spectator are only useful if they cite facts: they never do.
The point of the post is that McCain is losing the health care battle to Obama. Whether you like it or not that’s reality.
In answer to “THE OTHER VIEW,” What would be your solution? A manage care system, like the type that we have as an option for seniors, where it is costing the tax payer more money. Mccain has no knowledge about independent health care. He doesn’t know how it works. With all the medical underwriting and pre-existing conditions,it would be terrible.