McCain Voted for Medical Savings Accounts. McCain voted against an amendment to take the Medical Savings Accounts provisions from the underlying Kennedy-Kassebaum bill that would have increased health are portability. Medical Savings Accounts help the healthy and wealthy while driving up costs for others. [1]
McCain Voted in Favor of Raising Eligibility Age, Means Testing. McCain voted in support of provisions that would increase the age for Medicare eligibility to 67, impose a new $5 copayment for home health care visits, and means test Medicare. He also voted in support of provisions that would gradually raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 between 2003 and 2027. [2]
1998: McCain Voted Against a Patients’ Bill of Rights. McCain voted to kill an amendment to the Budget Resolution that would express the sense of the Senate that the Federal Government will pass a “patients’ bill of rights.” The “bill of rights” would guarantee access to coverage, prohibit so-called gag clauses, and establish a procedure to provide for an independent, impartial entity to review appeals when a health plan decides to deny care. The vote was a motion to table. [3]
1999: McCain Voted Again Against a Real Patients’ Bill of Rights. McCain voted against the Democratic version of the Patients’ Bill of Rights, which would have ensured all Americans in managed care are covered with protections, including adequate access to specialists, access to emergency rooms, ending gag orders and improper financial incentives, and the right to hold HMOs accountable. [4]
Recent health care stories
Life Support
The health care system would be put on "life support" under McCain, according to a piece over at the Hill:
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John McCain's Failing Grade on Healthcare
John McCain's healthcare proposals get an "F" on his report card.
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McCain Introduced by Healthcare Lobbyist at Healthcare Event
Smooth: At his health care policy event yesterday at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Florida, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was introduced by the institute's chairman, former Republican senator Connie Mack. But, as Hotline reports, Mack...
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John McCain on Children's Healthcare and SCHIP
Just received an e-mail "from the desk of John McCain." (Heh.) Today, there are 47 million uninsured individuals in the U.S., and nearly a quarter of them are children. ... which John McCain ensured did not have healthcare when he...
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Dean: John McCain's Health Care Plan the Wrong Choice for America's Future
In a new ad and a speech at the University of South Florida today, John McCain showed once again why his approach to health care is the wrong choice for America's future.
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Howard Dean: John McCain Offers More of the Same on Iraq and Health Care
John McCain traveled to Miami Children's Hospital to explain why he is promising four more years of the Bush health care agenda. While the number of Americans lacking health care insurance has climbed to 47 million on President Bush's watch, John McCain's health care plan would do nothing to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and nothing to ensure that cancer survivors and people with other pre-existing medical conditions can get health insurance.
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McCain Myth Buster: John McCain and Health Care
Today's McCain Myth: John McCain understands how to address the challenges facing America's working families, like getting quality health care.
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McCain Myth Buster Day 3: John McCain and Veterans Health Care
After casting himself as a "Maverick" in 2000, the new John McCain is walking in lockstep with President Bush, pandering to the right wing of the Republican Party, and embracing the ideology he once denounced. On the campaign trail McCain has callously abandoned many of his previously held positions, even contradicted himself, in a blatant attempt to remake himself into a candidate Republicans can accept in 2008. So just who is the real John McCain? The Democratic National Committee will present a daily fact aimed at exposing the man behind the myth.
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Panderer in Chief Prepares for CPAC
As he closes in on his party's nomination, John McCain is bringing the Double Talk Express to places it's never been before: like today's CPAC conference. Desperate to lock up the right wing of his party, McCain is heading to the annual Conservative Political Action Committee he skipped last year to give a speech sandwiched between Vice President Dick Cheney today and President Bush tomorrow.
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McCain Promises Third Bush Term
John McCain's Double-Talk express may have rolled past his Republican cohorts in New Hampshire after a disappointing fourth place in Iowa, but his record makes one thing clear: he offers more of the same.
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[RPC, web page, Vote #72, 4/18/96]
[CQ Vote 115, 1997, Rejected 25-75, 6/25/97; Vote was on motion to waive the budget act; CQ Vote 112, Motion to waive the budget act passed 62-38, 6/24/97]
[CQ, Vote #73, Motion to table agreed to 51-47 (R 44-3, D 0-44) 4/2/98]
[CQ Vote 182, Motion to table agreed to, 53-47, 6/22/99]