Press Release from the PP Action Fund About McCain's Health Care Plan

Taken from the PP Action Fund Press Release sent Wednesday September 17, 2008


More than 17 million American women are uninsured. Only one out of every four women says she is very confident that she can afford health care for herself and her family. The numbers don’t lie — this country has a health care crisis.

At Planned Parenthood, we hear from women every day who tell us that they have nowhere else to turn and, too often, “basic care” is reduced to emergency room care. When women aren’t able to get the exams and vaccines they need to prevent cancer, there is more cancer. When women aren’t able to afford their contraception, there is more unintended pregnancy. When women can’t get screenings for sexually transmitted infections, their health and future fertility are jeopardized.

For eight years, more and more of these services have fallen beyond the reach of millions of women. George Bush has looked the other way, patching the problem with ineffective tax cuts to the wealthy. Now, John McCain has offered a health care plan that would do much of the same.

A new study by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the Center for American Progress Action Fund analyzed John McCain’s health care plan, and found that it would be worse for women and could potentially cause millions of women to lose their employer-sponsored health care coverage.

McCain’s plan offers health care tax credits to families with the supposed goal of giving them greater freedom of choice in choosing health plans. In reality, his plan might help insurance companies build their profits, but it isn’t going to help families.

The tax credits are too small to really offset the costs of comprehensive health insurance — for those already uninsured or underinsured, basic care would remain out of reach. But this plan would also destabilize the system of employer-based health coverage that 59 million women count on to cover their families. The Tax Policy Center estimates that his approach would cause 20 million people to lose their employer-sponsored coverage over 10 years.

For the 59 million women whose health is at stake, those just aren’t good odds.

But not only would the plan undermine current health care policies, it would also undermine the laws that protect women’s health in states across the country by allowing insurance companies to cherry pick their state of residence and to sell policies without regard to state insurance rules.

Thirty-one states currently require comprehensive drug benefits to include contraception. Twenty-one states require coverage of maternity care. Twenty-nine states require coverage for cervical cancer screenings. These are protections that every state should provide, but under McCain’s plan, almost no woman could count on having them.

The next president will inherit this health care crisis, and America needs solutions. Senator McCain’s plan isn’t even a good start.