In the Land of "Might Have Been" McCain Would Have Already Gotten Us Health Care Reform!

Turns out that McCain's Economic Brain Trust is Flat Busted:

Holtz-Eakin said he's been paying about $1,000 a month to extend the private health insurance he received on McCain's campaign through the government's COBRA program, but that will expire in a few months. This is the first time in his life he has not had employer-provided health coverage. "I worry about where I go next in the way many Americans do," he said. But although Holtz-Eakin dresses the part -- on this day he wore a gray pinstripe suit, white shirt with cuff links and a powder-blue tie -- he is in no hurry to find full-time work. He said he'll get a job when he's ready, even if it means buying an individual health insurance plan at an exorbitant premium.

"Let's not whine too much about me," he said. "I'm a wealthy, affluent American in the big picture."

Despite his personal trials, however, Holtz-Eakin said his conviction on the hot-button issue of health care is unchanged. He believes that reform is needed, but that President Obama and congressional Democrats are going about it the wrong way. The system is "broken," he said, but the bills now before Congress do not cut costs enough. On the campaign trail, Holtz-Eakin promoted McCain's plan to eliminate the tax exemption for employer-sponsored health insurance and give tax credits to individuals to buy their own coverage.

Of the bills moving through Congress, Holtz-Eakin said: "I wish the policies were different, and I wish I could've somehow gotten us to a bipartisan place. I think McCain had the capacity to do that.

"But the reality is what it is," he continued. "You can't live your life in the land of what might have been."

What I find astonishing about this article is that it comes right up to the water's edge of the reality of most Americans, dips its toe in, and then runs back for cover. If Mr. Holtz-Eakin is the divorced father of two children who is paying for his children's health care coverage? How would his suggested "fixes" for Health Care affect his wife's premiums, or her employer's liklihood of continuing family coverage for her? Who pays for his mother's health care coverage if it isn't Medicare--and if it is Medicare why does the article (and Holtz-Eakin) ignore that fact and ignore the historic attacks on Medicare levied by McCain and the entire Republican party?

How can a presumably intelligent man look at all the data and imagine for one minute that McCain--a notoriously unpleasant and difficult egomaniac with little insight into economic issues could have "gotten us to a bipartisan place?" But I suppose its all of a piece with the fact that he still believes that taxing employer health care benefits and subsidizing the purchase of junk health insurance would solve his personal medical insurance issues, let alone make a dent in those of the rest of the country.