AARP Eye Center
Election Countdown Day: 3
By Alejandra Owens, November 1, 2008 11:20 AM
There are 3 days left until Election Day, and we here at ShAARP Session thought it appropriate to conduct a little countdown while we're impatiently awaiting for the big day to arrive.
Each day, we'll give you a different issue and lay out both candidate's position. Last time we brought you candidate positions on the economy. Today's issue: health care.
McCain's Proposals:
- Replacing personal tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance with a $2,500 tax credit ($5,000 for families) to help people buy their own insurance. - Expanding health savings accounts for families to use tax-free dollars to pay for health care. - Allowing individuals to buy any plan available, regardless of state of residence. - Lowering drug costs by allowing reimportation of less-expensive drugs from Canada and other developed nations. - Using information technology to reduce health care system administrative costs for billing.
Obama's Proposals:
- Making affordable and quality coverage available to everyone who wants it through a combination of private insurance and expanded public plans covering essential medical services that include preventive, maternity and mental health care.
- Requiring employers to provide health insurance to workers or pay a percentage of their payroll to finance new public programs, with company plans reimbursed for a portion of the cost of catastrophic illness or injury.
- Holding costs down by allowing people to choose from a pool of competing private plans and one public plan similar to Medicare.
- Requiring that all children have health insurance, with costs subsidized by repealing President Bush's tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000.
- Allowing children up to age 25 to get coverage under their family health insurance.
- Lowering costs through greater use of information technology.
- Allowing the reimportation of safe, lower-cost prescription medicines from Canada and other developed countries. This information was gleaned from AARP's Decision 2008 Matchups. Choose wisely!