He Feels Your Pain (NOT)

(this piece was also published on themanwiththemuckrake blog today)
Please let me relate a little personal information about myself here. My early life was in a family that was devasted by a major illness. We were a white solid middle class family with health insurance. Over the course of six years, what the insurance didn't cover left my father in such major debt that we lost our house. He died soon after and I was pretty much a homeless street kid in Detroit on my own. I managed to have a pretty interesting life and I learned a lot fast and even ended up in college, but I would say that most of my real knowlege comes from educating myself.
I have always believed that America could do better. I have always believed that health care was a right, not a privilege.

This week, we have seen the dreams of many Americans go up in flames in the biggest recorded loss of personal wealth in modern times. We have seen the government bail out and take over some of the biggest financial institutions on the planet. The people on top, the executives who played fast and loose with regulations and the dreams of the investors are not suffering. They all walk, no matter what happens with pockets stuffed with cash.

John McCain wanted to privatize Social Security. If he had his way when this project was being considered, the future of most of us would be in doubt as a privatized Social Security System would have gone down in flames this week. Your future welfare would have been trashed.
He would like us to forget this proposal now that he is the bad boy of Wall Street, scolding all those who's pocket he still is in. Let's not forget that 83 of his advisors are lobbyists for Wall Street and he has been shifting the same pieces on the game board since his involvement in the last major bank scandal, the Savings and Loan scandals of the 80's. Remember the Keating 5? Anyone?
That's why I was shocked when I read this piece by Paul Krugman about McCains proposal to privatize health care:

McCain on banking and health

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

If you click on the links, it will take you to the article in the current issue of Contingencies Magazine.
John McCain has never had to pay for health care insurance in his life. He was born into an Upper Echelon Elite Armed Forces Family and enjoyed the best health care the service could offer. Now as a Veteran he is totally covered for life as well as the free coverage all members of congress enjoy. His entire life has been one of privilege and the full coverage of the best socialized medical systems in the Western Hemisphere.
And now he wants to put your coverage in the deregulated hands of the institutions that were responsible for the biggest loss of personal wealth in recorded history.