Health Affairs last week published independent analyses of Sens. McCain and Obama’s health plans [and also a third paper on how the plans could best be combined]. According to the analyses, 20 million Americans would lose coverage through their employers under Sen. John McCain’s health care plan, but Sen. Barack Obama’s plan would sport a $100 million price tag. Watch for coverage of the two candidates’ health care proposals in the October issue of Cardiology.

I hope every ACC member becomes engaged in the campaign of whichever candidate you support (it could help us later). I would offer the observation that neither party platform does much for physicians — we would likely be either harmed or ignored by both parties (harmed in different but equally frustrating ways). After this week’s interactions, I can offer you the following predictions for the future:

• The US economy is in big trouble. The just-announced $700 billion financial institution bailout is a very troubling sign for all national priorities, and health care will still be second to national defense and military efforts. We will have to pay back China or whoever else underwrites these “loans” from the Treasury. It is disturbing that we appear to be privatizing profit, but nationalizing debt. We will all have to pay off the cost of the $700 billion and its interest. Meanwhile, while the Treasury Department is spinning it otherwise, we have all recently assumed the debt holdings of Fannie and Freddie. Our national debt has increased this past two weeks by an estimated $5 trillion of taxpayer risk. That doesn’t bode well for the need for massive health care expenditures, even though the health care sector has provided most of the new jobs and growth of the economy over the past eight years!
• Even without being able to finance universal access to care or big reforms, the nation is moving with certainty toward measuring quality (and value) of care,  and towards increasingly paying physicians in terms of their (our) performance on quality and value.
• We need to help our members understand these issues and prepare for them — not hide from them. We (at least ACC and STS) are enough ahead of this game to be able to lead the way for medical professionals to responsibly oversee quality and measurement on behalf of patients and society. No other constituency really can. It’s our challenge. And it won’t be anywhere near as expensive as achieving universal access or bailing out Medicare. We can do it.

More coverage:

McCain, Obama Health Plans Critiqued [Health Affairs Blog]
The McCain Critique: Out Of Touch And Short Of Ideas [Health Affairs Blog ... a rebuttal to the critique of the Obama plan]
McCain’s Radical Agenda [Bob Herbert, New York Times columnist]
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