Mccain: town hall 05/05/08

John McCain Town Hall Cleveland, OH 05/01/08 TRANSCRIPT: PEGGY CHEL: . . . I just need you to know that 2.8 million Ohioans live at or below 200% of the poverty level and 1.8 million live between 200% and 300% of the poverty level. Those at 200% cannot afford to contribute anything to their health care...those between 200% and 300% have a limited ability to pay for health coverage...Those people are going to be in trouble and are in trouble now...and I'm concerned about further privatizing health care basically because the insurance companies have made life or death...decisions on people's health care and because they've gone home with billions of dollars in bonuses...I also would like to hear you address the huge insurance lobby and how they have kept themselves making billions of dollars at the demise of American citizens. JOHN MCCAIN:...I believe in and am a strong supporter of community health centers and I think we need a lot more of them...as you know 47 million Americans that are without health insurance today. Now, half of those people are people that are between jobs...And the other half are people that are children. There's 8 million children that have not signed up for SCHIP...the fact is that there's also a large group of Americans who are in a category where they cannot get insurance...I talked about this guaranteed access plan where we're going to have to work with the states and the governors...it's going to require a federal contribution to care for the chronic disease, preexisting condition group of Americans who simply, under any circumstances could not afford, and frankly some of those people are the people that you see at the community health centers as well and you see at the emergency rooms all over America because they can't get health care anywhere else. And you know better than I do that emergency room care is the most expensive kind of care in America. And I'm insulting your intelligence by telling you these things but it brings me to my point, I don't believe that bigger—you said you don't believe think it should be further privatized, I think that's probably true but I also don't think we should have greater government control over healthcare systems in America. I think if you go to Canada, or you go to some other countries where you have government run health care systems I don't think you would find the quality of health care in those countries at a level that we Americans have grown to expect...every family in America...would be able to go across state lines and purchase a health insurance policy that suits them and their needs best...when you have employer provided health insurance, you don't have a choice...so we have no money now to purchase a health insurance policy now, at least you've got $5000 in a refundable tax credit where you can go online, you choose the insurance company of your choice...you can go any place in America, then these insurance companies will have to compete more effectively against each other...I don't believe that employer based--if somebody wants to keep their insurance policy that their employer's providing, fine. That's fine with me. But I also want to give them the choice. Now we need walk in clinics, we need to have community health centers, we need to have...outcome-based treatment...if a person has one of these five diseases I was talking about and you pay for every procedure, every test, every visit to a doctor, obviously, the costs go up and up and up. I want to tell a health care provider: "Here's a patient with a chronic disease. Treat 'em for a year. Here's a certain amount of money and if a patient is in good shape after a certain period of time, we will reward you. But give 'em their care." Number 2, there's a program called "cash and counseling" where seniors are given the money. They're given the money by the federal government to take care of their needs and they choose which doctor or health care provider they need. And you know what we find out?...When they're making the decisions, they're far wiser...and finally we need to put the choices into the hands of the patient and that's the whole theory behind that. There's many other steps we need to take. 1 of them is malpractice reform. I think it's pretty clear that any doctor in this room will tell you that they or their associates will prescribe unnecessary tests or procedures because of their fear of ending up in court. And finally, what we've seen here...we have patients in direct contact, no matter where they are in the world, with their physician or provider LABEL: JM OH 5-1 (EW#5) DAGH - Clip F To download a high res version of this clip, VISIT: Part 1: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/s... Part 2: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/y... Part 3: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/v... To download the full campaign event, VISIT:Tape 1: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/5... Tape 2: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/q...