Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Access to Life Improving Scarce Resources


America's leaders face both an energy and health care crisis. Presidential hopeful John McCain wants to improve access to oil by allowing offshore drilling but has no plans to cover 47 million uninsured and 16 million underinsureds. A bipartisan group in Congress knows the pressure businesses face with that pesky health insurance benefit and is greasing the skids for employers to jettison their traditional responsibility.

Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, joined with his conservative friends across the aisle to shift health insurance responsibility to the employee. Unions would become relevant as the new group purchaser of health insurance. Andy Stern, President of the largest healthcare union, called emplyer sponsored health insurance "dead and not coming back." Businesses shifted retirement risk to employees over the last two decades and clearly wish to do the same with healthcare coverage.

My question to McCain, Wyden, and Stern is this: Now that we're responsible for our retirement and health care bills, when do we pick up the shovel and dig for fossil fuels in the back yard? Will that reduce or increase our risk of a heart attack?

I suggest citizens vote every incumbent out of office. It's the only chance to get the blues and reds out of oily corporate pockets. Do you trust Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, to reform healthcare to your advantage when he took campaign donations from eight for-profit healthcare companies with no facilities in his state? A pox on all their houses...