The Candidates on Disability - Part VI: Obama and Healthcare

Surely this is the last installment in the series? We shall see.

Obama ran a great ad that talked about his healthcare plan, with a memorable graphic showing a large, red, double-headed arrow spanning from socialized medicine at one end to deregulation at the other. Right in the middle was the Obama rising sun emblem. (If you can find that image anywhere online, I'd love to have it!)

From the HealthCare page on Obama's campaign web site: On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes - government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong, and that’s why they’ve proposed a plan that strengthens employer coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference. . . .

Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year.

If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

Highlights:

• Make Health Insurance Work for People and Businesses - Not Just Insurance and Drug Companies.
• Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions
• All children will be covered by a health plan
• Several supports in place to help (and incentivize) small businesses to offer affordable health plans to their employees.
• You still have choice. You can stay in your employer plan or choose another. You can choose your doctors. You can be a partner in your own health care decisions.
• Obama is a strong supporter of mental health parity and he believes that serious mental illnesses must be covered on the same terms and conditions as are applicable to physical illnesses and diseases.

Here's how it works.

• Barack Obama will pay for his $50 - $65 billion health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.
• Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.

But don't take my word for it. Note endorsements of Obama's plan by The American Small Business League, National Staff Nurses Union, American Nurses Association, National Union Hospital Healthcare Employees, and Doctors for Obama, as well as analyses by The Kaiser Family Foundation and The Commonwealth Fund.

That's all she wrote.