Obama ad: ‘Can’t Explain’ – Healthcare Debate turned on McCain

The fact that John McCain plans to the tax the insurance payment contributions that you get from your employers – fits right in with what one of his advisers on healthcare said – when he commented that if they had their way government would cease and desist from saying that anyone is not insured – but rather note where that person got their healthcare from – if a person receives their healthcare from a doctor – than this would be seen as one provider – whereas if a person got their healthcare from the emergency room (ER) – then this could also be seen as a healthcare provider – but the one of last resort. It would simply be noted.

Obama plans to work with employers to help lower insurance costs – not put a tax on it.

Under Obama’s plan it appears there is going to be some sort of insurance shake up – in order to get people insured at a reasonable rate – with a policy that looks similar to what John McCain and members of Congress already enjoy.

Here’s Obama’s new ad off the debate, touching, as we wrote last night, on the push the campaign had already begun on McCain’s healthcare plan.

This one’s airing on national cable. Obama has another ad — which I haven’t seen on line — also directly attacking McCain’s plan.

As Jonathan and I wrote:

Obama’s aides said the campaign would key in not on something Palin said, but rather on what she didn’t: Her failure to offer a detailed defense of McCain’s plan to finance a $5,000 healthcare tax credit by
treating employers’ healthcare payments as taxable – something Democrats relish hitting both as a “radical” healthcare scheme and a tax hike.

The campaign had already decided to attack McCain’s healthcare plan, and the debate exchange will help drive that focus, they said.

“We’re on a big offensive on John McCain’s healthcare plan,” said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. “I think Sen. Biden did a terrific job today of describing why middle class families should fear
John McCain’s health care plan. She didn’t answer the attack.”

Palin’s silence – she attacked Obama’s plan as “government run,” but didn’t return to McCain’s – was “a huge missed opportunity,” Plouffe said, “because I will assure you this: Every voter in every
battleground state is going to know that John McCain is taxing healthcare for the very first time. Twenty-one million people lose their healthcare because small businesses will drop it.”

Obama has already begun airing one ad that casts his plan as a commonsense alternative to McCain’s “extreme,” and aides said he would begin to push the issue much more intensely across battleground states.

In Missouri, for example, it will be part of a broad push to raise voters’ doubts about McCain’s healthcare plan, Obama’s Missouri State Director Buffy Wicks said. Along with the ad, expected to begin airing here soon, the campaign has planned four pieces of direct mail attacking McCain’s plan.

Source: Politico

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