AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

Where Do the Candidates Get their Health Insurance?

Reporter Julie Rovner of NPR had a great story this morning. She asked the presidential candidates where they got their health insurance. The answers highlighted the weakness of the standard Republican position that private insurance companies will solve America's health care financing problem. None of the major candidates disclosed that he/she received health insurance through individual plans.

The candidates who are sitting congressional representatives get health insurance through the FEHC plan, the standard plan for governmental employees. John Edwards indicated that he and his wife (who has cancer) are covered under an employer's plan as employees of his presidential campaign. John McCain indicated that he is covered under FEHC as a senator, under VA as a veteran, Medicare due to his age, and on a supplemental basis, under his wife's plan. I don't know that anybody pointed out to him, that coordinating benefits between multiple payers is a big source of the overhead that cripples the American system. McCain is covered by three separate Federal government systems and one private (presumably) group policy, there's not an individual plan in there.

Romney, Huckabee, Thompson and Giuliani either declined to state where their coverage came from or did not respond to NPR's repeated inquiries. All are in favor of increased reliance on private individual policies. Giuliani and Thompson have each survived bouts with cancer, and they would likely be uninsurable on an individual basis.

That leads me back to Edwards. Of all the candidates still in the race, except for Dennis Kucinich, Edwards' healthcare plan has the clearest path to universal coverage. Still, after not winning any of the first three primaries, there's pressure on Edwards to quit the race. It appears that if he quit the race and folded his campaign, his wife would then be uninsured and uninsurable. Perhaps a couple million of the Edwards' money would have to go to pay for her cancer treatment. Maybe it's better to stay in the race a bit longer . . .