Health is Wealth
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- October
- 29
I was originally working on a local cartoon for today that I just wasn’t happy with, so this was a backup – Didn’t start the morning out intending to pick on poor old Mac and his hapless campaign for two days in a row!
But, while we’re at it: His health care plan is timid. While giving a $5k tax credit (something that Gov. Palin cluelessly ridicules Obama over) for health insurance expenses, it really doesn’t address skyrocketing costs. Nor does it take into consideration the fact that those that can’t afford to itemize a tax credit in their tax returns also happen to make up the majority of the uninsured. In order to make the whole thing viable, McCain also proposes taking away the employer tax credit for providing health insurance, which would just theatrically shuffle around those that do currently have employer based health insurance with no net gain, and if your policy costs more than $5k, you will actually incur a loss. It has the appearance of a “look I’m doing something” plan, while carefully not upsetting the insurance industry or GOP party ideologues.
That said, based on what we know about McCain, if he does somehow pull off an electoral upset on Tuesday, and he becomes President, one can hope that he will not be afraid to discard the electioneering, party-line garbage and revamp his health plan to piss the aforementioned off. That’s a big leap of faith, though.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 10:42 am by Matt Davies.
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Matt,
If I understand any of the drawbacks of McCain’s plan (a big “if”), it includes no provisions for anyone losing their jobs, & therefore, their employer-based health insurance.
Anyone can see that job layoffs are daily occurrences, & more are constantly in the offing.
This is a heartbreaking time to think of 1 more way to shove the newly unemployed & now uninsured person right thru the social safety net.
When we fall thru, who’ll be there to catch us if McCain still sees our country’s main enemy as socialized medicine?
Matt:
I hope you don’t get tired of hearing this, because I’ll never get tired of saying it: You do great work, and I really enjoy it.
Not only are your views accurate, you tell them in such a clever and hilarious way. Unlike that jerkoff Michael Ramirez.
Bush and his administration have run America into the ground, yet over the last 8 years Ramirez hasn’t drawn a SINGLE cartoon saying anything adverse about them. I’m surprised Ramirez doesn’t work for Fox News (sorry to spout off here, but he doesn’t publish a valid e-mail address).
Thanks BASHEA.
You know, despite his misguided, fascistic tendencies, Mike Ramirez is a good guy. I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but he has been one of my biggest boosters and supporters throughout my career and we are good friends regardless of our political differences. If only the country could function that way.
As to his inexplicable lack of criticism of Bush, you raise an interesting point. Many cartoonists (who overwhelmingly lean toward Obama) are wondering what it’ll be like cartooning a guy we agree with. I agreed with a lot of what President Clinton stood for too, but it didn’t take long for A) him to start slipping up and B) His political adversaries to go nuts and consequently make ripe cartoon targets of themselves too.
Matt:
My apologies for calling your friend Michael Ramirez a jerk-off, but he’s worked hard to earn it.
The funny thing is that I really enjoy his artwork and cleverness – it’s just such a waste to use it on super-biased falsehoods.
Perhaps you can bring him back from the dark side.