John McCain is facing a major health care crisis. Not so much his own, though questions abound about the Republican presidential nominee's bouts with skin cancer. No, as the Boston Globe details, it is the feeble McCain health care plan itself which is terminally flawed.
Which isn't to say McCain's age and medical history aren't a concern of his campaign. While the McCain camp has repeatedly delayed releasing his medical records, the New York Daily News is reporting that McCain will host a public meeting with his doctors some time next month. For man who has described himself as "older than dirt" and emphasized the importance of his vice presidential selection by noting "I'm aware of enhanced importance of this issue because of my age," reassuring American voters about his longevity can't come too soon.
But as Elizabeth Edwards highlighted last week, John McCain's personal medical situation is the least of his problems on the road to the White House. Noting that due to their respective pre-existing conditions, "neither one of us would be covered by his health policy," Edwards suggested that it is McCain's gap-filled health care medical policy prescription itself which fails test after test for the American people.
Those failures were further detailed by the Boston Globe Sunday in its devastating assessment, "McCain Camp Working Out Healthcare Details." Even as polls consistently show health care to be Americans' greatest concern after the economy and the war in Iraq, John McCain's doctrinaire laissez-faire approach raises more questions than it answers.
Last fall, for example, McCain flatly rejected mandating that insurance companies provide coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions, proclaiming "that would be mandating what the free enterprise system does." As the Globe noted:

McCain's response highlights the challenge he faces as he prepares to try to sell his healthcare plan in the fall campaign. He says the country must provide access to healthcare for all our citizens, and that "we need to help people who need it." But McCain also wants to shrink government's role in healthcare and doesn't want to impose regulations on insurance companies.
As a result, McCain's aides have been scrambling to come up with ways to satisfy those who want more coverage without violating what they call McCain's conservative principles on the issue...
..."These are real questions, and I think there will be answers, and there better be, but they are not there yet," said McCain adviser Thomas P. Miller, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "A lot more remains to be hammered out"...
..."We are working on it," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's top policy adviser. "We'll put out more details. As we do, it will be clearer to people."

What McCain has offered to date is a mixture of platitudes and half-baked rehashed proposals rehashed from President Bush's playbook. At the core of McCain Care is the end of the employer-health care tax break, which is replaced by a $5,000 tax credit for families to purchase insurance in the private market. That those credits are woefully inadequate when the average family policy tops $12,000 a year (and useless when insurers can still cherry pick among healthier Americans) is apparently beside the point. As the McCain web site proclaims, good outcomes will magically occur because "John McCain believes in personal responsibility:"

"We must do more to take care of ourselves to prevent chronic diseases when possible, and do more to adhere to treatment after we are diagnosed with an illness."

In his public statements, McCain is seemingly unconcerned by 47 million Americans without health care, a dramatic drop in the percentage of employers providing medical insurance and spiraling costs:

McCain compared health insurance to buying a home, saying it was desirable but not required. "I think that one of our goals should be that every American own their own home," he said. "But I'm not going to mandate that every American own their home. If it's affordable and available, then it seems to be that it's a matter of choice amongst Americans."

If that "let them eat cake" attitude from John McCain sounds familiar, it should. After all, in what was billed as a major economic address 10 days ago, John McCain announced that he adamantly opposes federal government action in addressing the housing market crisis:

"Some Americans bought homes they couldn't afford, betting that rising prices would make it easier to refinance later at more affordable rates," he said. Later he added that "any assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren't."

It's no surprise that in poll after poll, Americans overwhelmingly prefer Democratic approaches to health care to the "you're on your own" abdication of the GOP. As for John McCain and his 19th century laissez-faire philosophy, Bill Clinton's 1996 description of Bob Dole sums it up:

"I can only tell you that I don't think Senator Dole is too old to be president. It's the age of his ideas that I question."