Wednesday, April 30, 2008

McCain proposes “market-based” health plan

Senator John McCain has announced his “market-based” health plan (see article here). The proposal is based on McCain’s belief that the free markets can provide better health care for poor people than a strictly government-managed plan.

“Under a free-market plan, my friends,” said McCain in an address unveiling the plan, “impoverished people can sell their internal organs on the open market and use the money to buy health-care for themselves and their families, or to pay for much-needed vacations, or for home improvements—assuming they are not themselves homeless. Poor people with damaged or otherwise unsalable internal organs can sell the organs of their children, relatives, or neighbors. They can sell their body fluids, or carry out the other free-market transactions that this health care plan will encourage.”

“My friends, experience has shown that free markets do a far better job of allocating scarce resources like kidneys, eyes, lungs, and skin than our government ever can. Markets keep special interest groups like the aged, the sick, and the hungry from monopolizing the resources that young, healthy, well-fed, and rich people want to have. Markets are democratic: they value a pauper's dollar exactly the same as they value a millionaire’s dollar.”

To show he's a man of action, and not just a man with big ideas, McCain has kicked off the plan by buying three kidneys and an adrenal gland with his wife's money, and donating them to a homeless shelter.

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