McCain: "Healthcare? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Healthcare"

Obama goes into tomorrow's debate with McCain, way ahead in the polling-- both nationally and electoral-vote wise-- and with the media willing to discuss the lies and negativity McCain's camp has been getting away with. Even the NY Daily News, referring to the candidate they are likely to endorse as "McNasty," exposed a McCain campaign staffer who told them why the campaign has descended into the gutter: "It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice. If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."

And that was best illustrated today when McCain's devastating health care cuts came out in the Wall Street Journal. It's probably the nail in his political coffin. McCain would pay for his already completely inadequate and outmoded health plan with gigantic reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, cuts that will amount to something like $1.3 trillion over 10 years.

At a time when Americans are craving modern health care insurance similar to the rest of the industrialized world, McCain is basically saying he's all for bailing out his pals on Wall Street but that we can't afford healthcare for our seniors and our working families.

The Republican presidential nominee has said little about the proposed cuts, but they are needed to keep his health-care plan "budget neutral," as he has promised. The McCain campaign hasn't given a specific figure for the cuts, but didn't dispute the analysts' estimate.

In the months since Sen. McCain introduced his health plan, statements made by his campaign have implied that the new tax credits he is proposing to help Americans buy health insurance would be paid for with other tax increases.

But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain's senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 is estimated at $457.5 billion.

While McCain is hiding behind Holtz-Eakin's deceptive explanations of his plans to actually make Bush's era even worse for average families and behind his lipsticked pitbull's wild gutter attacks on Obama, the Democratic nominee laid out his entire health care plan from top to bottom over the weekend-- and in plain English.

This morning I was talking with L.A.'s most respected and knowledgeable radio talk show host, Johnny Wendell, and he had an interesting perspective on what is being viewed as yet another serious McCain stumble. "As the Dow tumbles to a four figure fumble and McCain embraces a trillion plus in Medicare cuts that would reduce senior health care to the level of over 60's scrounging for dog food in 1932, there is panic in the halls of the hallowed church of Die Partei Republikkkanische-- if William Ayers were a brigade of Weathermen and Jerry Wright a battalion of Black Panthers, it would matter naught-- the salvos from "Wasilla Spice" and her senescent servant may as well be in Sanskrit for all the effect they'll have on 11/4."