McCain: Focusing on health care
Posted: Monday, April 28, 2008 9:05 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Here are advanced experts of McCain’s remarks on health care today. “As a nation, we do not uniformly deliver the best possible care. Shortfalls in patient safety and medical errors remain a dangerous reality, and too many Americans do not have health insurance. But most importantly, our health care is too expensive. We spend a staggering amount of money on health care -- over $2 trillion and almost twice as much as any other country per person. Within the decade total health care spending will more than double and consume nearly one out of every five dollars in America.”
More: “We can build a health care system that is more responsive to our needs and is delivered to more people at lower cost. The ‘solution,’ my friends, isn't a one-size-fits-all-big government takeover of health care. It resides where every important social advance has always resided - with the American people themselves… The engine of our prosperity and progress has always been our freedom and the sense of responsibility for and control of our own destiny that freedom requires. The public's trust in government waxes and wanes. But we have always trusted in ourselves to meet any challenge that required only our ingenuity and industry to surmount. Any "solution" that robs us of that essential sense of ourselves is a cure far worse than the affliction it is meant to treat.”
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran this story: “Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field. But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.”
“Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates. The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control. The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole -- rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes -- but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.”
As first previewed yesterday on Meet the Press, the DNC has a new TV ad hitting McCain -- this time on his “100 years” comment. The ad will run for three weeks on CNN and MSNBC.
The New York Times’ Krugman takes a rare break from hitting Obama to take a shot at McCain today on taxes.
McCain goes there on Jeremiah Wright… Per the New York Times, "McCain delved on Sunday into remarks made by Senator Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., saying it was ‘beyond belief’ that Mr. Wright had likened the Romans at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion to the Marines and had suggested that the United States was acting like Al Qaeda under a different color flag.”
“Up to now, Mr. McCain had largely avoided talking about the incendiary views of Mr. Wright, saying he wanted to run a ‘respectful’ campaign. He has even called on the North Carolina Republican Party to pull an advertisement that focuses on Mr. Wright. But Mr. McCain took a different approach at a news conference here when he criticized Mr. Wright for, as the senator paraphrased him, ‘comparing the United States Marine Corps with Roman legionnaires who were responsible for the death of our Savior, I mean being involved in that’ and for ‘saying that Al Qaeda and the American flag were the same flags.’”
More: "McCain said that he did not believe that Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, shared those views and that he was still against the advertisement in North Carolina. But he suggested that Mr. Obama had made the subject fair play by declaring in an interview shown over the weekend on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that questions about Mr. Wright were ‘a legitimate political issue.’”
Conservative commentators, like Jennifer Rubin, seem to feel vindicated that Obama himself said on Fox News that he believed Wright was a fair issue.
