Voting Will Cause Millions of Americans to Lose Health Insurance
For the most part, I’ve been ignoring the barrage of radio and TV commercials for Obama and McCain that have been coming with increasing frequency as we get closer to election day. They’re almost always 90% focused on bashing the opponent, and every time I listen to one of these ads it makes me dislike BOTH candidates more, because I hear bad things about one of them and I get annoyed at the other for mudslinging.
This morning, on the way to work, I heard an ad for each candidate in the course of about 5 minutes. I actually paid attention this time, because there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there was a discrepancy between ads I’d recently heard from both of them.
Sure enough:
- Obama’s ad said that McCain’s plan will cause 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.
- McCain’s ad said that Obama’s plan will cause 50 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.
Going by the “lesser of two evils” approach, it seems like I should vote for McCain, because 30 million fewer Americans will lose their health insurance coverage. That’s a significant number, representing roughly 10% of the U.S. population!
However, I’ll still feel guilty for being somewhat responsible for that unfortunate 20 million Americans that will lose their coverage under McCain’s plan (around 6.7% of the U.S. population).
I’ve created some 10×10 grids to graphically represent the number of Americans without health insurance as of 2007 (about 15%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), and the numbers if McCain and Obama are both giving realistic estimates (highly unlikely) in their ads attacking each other’s health care reform plans.
The shaded regions in the grids indicate the number of Americans without health insurance in each of these cases.
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| 15% without health insurance in 2007 | 22% without health insurance under McCain’s plan | 32% without health insurance under Obama’s plan |
Aren’t infographics fun? Ideally, there would be no shaded regions, or a candidate would offer a health care reform plan that would result in fewer shaded regions (i.e. fewer uninsured Americans).
So, how many Americans are you going to help screw out of health insurance in this election? I’d love to hear what you think about these numbers, about my infographics, or anything else you might want to share with regard to the 2008 presidential election!
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October 18th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Though one must consider that both candidates will probably attack Iran, I tend to think that McCain will engage in foreign policy resulting in more deaths to foreign lives. We’ve supposedly finally gotten past 1 million in Iraq. Ours who don’t get coverage still get… life, usually. So if you want to think of total human harm, it becomes a lot harder to figure out…
October 19th, 2008 at 2:02 am
First, I love the infographics!
Second - I hadn’t realized that McCain was beating up Obama on how few folks he’d cover. I thought his argument was more of the: “do you want a socialist system where you have to see a bureaucrat before you see a Doctor?”
Of course, why not paint it as the worst of both worlds? “You’ll have to see a bureaucrat, *and* you won’t be covered!”
Looking at factcheck.org on the matter doesn’t really clear things up.
I suppose if you want to vote for the candidate that covers more people you should choose Obama. As the article says: “Independent studies generally agree on one thing – Obama’s plan would cover more people.”
The sad part is, it’s nearly impossible to untangle this issue - and this is something measurable!
I so wish both groups would submit their ads to a 3rd party like factcheck.org, and if the determination of the claim is something other than “True” (say, misleading, or just down right false), then they won’t run the ad.
The ads would be a lot less interesting. But, they might actually be useful.
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Yeah, it’s hard to choose for me as well. At first I liked Obama, mainly because he was inspiring and really did instill a little hope in me (this was back during the primaries). The I liked McCain a little more because, mostly, of the experience argument and that some of his ideaology is closer to mine than Obama. But now I dislike both for the slander, the fact that both are not representative of what I think most American want, and lastly, because they are both trying to play all sides and not stick to what is important to them, no matter what the political consequences are. I really do want a mavrick who agrees with me on most topics, and no matter how much they say they are, Neither will change much at all, in my opinon.
October 29th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I can’t take eyes and ears off TV because of this USA election, I am so interested in it and follow the news for about 3 months now. I hope you guys cast your votes. All the best from Australia!
November 4th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
[…] Obama, health-wise, will be bad. A many people have pointed out, BOTH PRESIDENTS would result in fewer people getting medical coverage! Between 1 and 50 million, depending on what you read. Nobody anywhere is saying either candidate […]
November 17th, 2008 at 1:13 am
HAHA thats awesome. Love the infographics. Looks like Obama won so hopefully i’m not one of the 50 million without health insurance.
December 29th, 2008 at 11:25 am
You’re talking about insurance. I think mr. Obama will not take the risk of putting down the good expectations of the many Americans if he is serious in uplifting their lives. The common good of the majority will surely prevail. I’m sure with this even though I’m not an American because I also care.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Funny how it all turned out in the end with Obama winning the election. Now its the economy to worry about.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Cool graphics, but you made them based on what a candidate said about the other, which is not always true. Now that Obama won we will see if what McCain said about him was true. Let’s hope not!
March 10th, 2009 at 6:27 am
I am glad that the elections were finished, because I am very tired talking about them.
March 15th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I have to agree with you there!
This election was one of the name bashing elections I’ve seen in a while.
This happens, in my opinion, when candidates have no set plan to bring to the voters attention. They would rather side step issues and focus on short falls that their opponent has.
I guess we’ll just have to see if Obama can keep his campaign promises. If he does, we might have a true winner!
March 16th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Both those candidates suck.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Voting is over, Obama is president. What did change? Did someone lose their Health Insurance? There something different here in Germany. You can’t lose your Health Insurance.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Your parents must be your dependents (or would have been your dependents except for the gross income test) for you to take a deduction anyway. So, unless you are supporting them: No.