McCain adviser: Everyone in U.S. has some health coverage
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/08/12/art.mccain0812.ap.jpg caption="A McCain adviser speaks out on the uninsured."]
(CNN) - A health care policy adviser for the McCain campaign told a newspaper reporter that nobody in the United States is technically uninsured, because everyone has access to hospital emergency rooms.
"So I have a solution [to the health care crisis]. And it will cost not one thin dime," John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, told the Dallas Morning News in an interview published Thursday.
"The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."
Hospital emergency rooms cannot technically turn away anyone for financial reasons.
"So instead of producing worthless statistics that people fling around in vacuous editorials and pointless debates, the Census Bureau should produce meaningful numbers, identifying all of the sources of funds people will draw on if they need medical care," said Goodman, who helped write McCain’s health care plan.
That plan would use a combination of tax incentives and market competition to make health care more affordable. It is not a universal health care plan – it does not guarantee insurance coverage for every American.
Read more: Goodman talks to the Dallas Morning News
Take a look: Candidates' health care plans
UPDATE: McCain's campaign says they do not consider Goodman to be an official campaign adviser.
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Uhhhhh..... OK right. Solve the problem by simply saying there are no uninsured? I see that being worked into a certain speech this evening.
And you guys say mccain has 'experience'??? I think I will take Obama's judgement over mccains 'experience' ANY DAY. This is insulting to americans. The repuglicans don't care about average citizens people, wake up. They have become a party for the rich only. Don't be fooled.
MccAIN'S HEALTHCARE PLAN...
SEE "GAFFE".....
IS this guy kidding, or does he really believe what he says? I have had experience using an emergency room at an uninsured stage of my life. The collection agencies will hound you into the ground and ruin your credit until the bill is paid.
Can any PUMA remember HILLARYCARE. Don't vote for this phony i too was a former Hillary supporter but i've moved on and now firmly for Obama!!!
LOL! There is that great in-touch style of McHouses.
I have not health insurance and have been on the same job 11 years. Well I has insurance 10 of those years. Time to toss out the crooked republicans.
Gee...this guy helped him with his non health care plan....he sounds as bad a Gramam when he said he were a nation of whiners and that we are just in a mental recession.
Even if I were still a Republican I would be voting for someone else!!
This is an advisor to Mccain, Mccain actually listens to this guy.
It's all in the mind!
Next!
Phil
Wow! Just Wow! I'm speechless over this ridiculous thought. Talk about someone being out of touch.
So what he's saying is that when people say they are not insured, it's all mental right? They have emergency room!
These people are PATHETIC!!!!
Can you go to the emergency room and get a mammogram, or annual pap smear, or prenatal care or well baby check up? Come on really now. This is a very calloused view, typical republican.
" So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."
_______________________________________________________
Hopefully folks will vote OBIDEN and we can say this line in reference to the last 8 years!!!!!!
going to an emergency room is not "free health care." It simply means that the emergency room has to stabilize you. EMTALA does not provide for anything more.
If you have cancer, you don't get chemo in an emergency room. You don't get radiation. If you have any other chronic health condition, you don't get treatment. The person from Kalamazoo should do some basic reading into the law before commenting on it.
What an incredible moron. I wonder....does he speak for John McCain? We've already been told by the McCain campaign that John McCain doesn't speak for John McCain.
Obviously this idiot has never had to wait 20 hours in an emergency room to get health care like the uninsured have to do.
I guess all those with cancer can just go to the emergency room everytime the need to have chemo...."It's like they take pride in being ignorant"
Is this John Goodman the comic actor? Quite apart from the fact that emergency rooms are closing all over the U.S., going to one is an experience in agony all by itself (no fault to the dedicated people working in them, there just aren't enough of them). Also, emergency room treatment is the most expensive kind there is to whomever is paying the bills.
And this clown Goodman advises McCain on health care? Holy catfish!
wow rich people can justify screwing poor people out of coverage so easily, voila.
idiots.
Obama in '08 or i'm off to Canada
So as a student I would no longer be uninsured but instead an additional $6000 in debt due to PAP smear tests and the yearly checkup. GIVE ME AN BREAK!!!!!! The Dems need to jump on this ASAP. Again we are a nation of whiners this time about our health care.
Go to the emergency room!!!! what a plan. Dems need to jump on this big time!!!!!
I am sorry but if you think that Obama's idea of throwing more tax payers money at things to solve all of the problems you must not be a tax payer. Universal medicine does nothing but bankrupt countries. I think we need to do a welfare to work program get people out there working for there medical insurance rather than it being handed to them by people who are out there working. I think we need to help employers to meet the cost of medical insurance therefore keeping the cost to the employee down. More tax payer money is not the answer to all of the angst in this country.
Wow, this guy is so friggin smart..Now why didn't anyone think of that? So I guess like mccain's economic adviser, people with no health care is just all in our heads?
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!!! ER will take you in, but you will get a bill!!! Who let this guy out of the pen??
OBAMA / BIDEN '08
This is truly shocking. This is a person who is relatively important and presumably educated.
Do the McCain people have any inkling as to how they come across?
If people go to the ER for routine treatments because they can't afford to go anywhere else, they have no funds to draw from. This almost sounds like a Dubya or McCain "joke" that serves only to show how truly out of touch they are.