Kerry: Tax and Spend Health Care Proposal

Senator Kerry pressed hard in the second debate for some form of nationalized health care:

"...I have a plan that will take the catastrophic cases out of the system, off your backs, pay for it out of a federal fund, which lowers the premiums for everybody in America, makes American business more competitive and makes health care more affordable.

This is a first grab of the healthcare system. How will putting the catastrophic component of health care into the hands of government make healthcare costs go down? It requires money, and that usually comes, in the Democrat mind, from the "wealthy." The government has to pay for this sort of coverage just as it does for Medicare and for Medicaid and for every other similar program. Usually, Democrat candidates hide their means for accomplishing big government programs. Kerry didn't:

Now, all of that can happen, but I have to ask you to do one thing: Join me in rolling back the president's unaffordable tax cut for people earning more than $200,000 a year. That's all. Ninety-eight percent of America, I'm giving you a tax cut and I'm giving you health care."

I don't think this comment got past the viewer easily. There has never been a voter backlash against cutting taxes for the highest income earners except in some isolated congressional districts. Class warfare rhetoric has not been substantially effective either in moving votes for Democrats. It has largely been effective in shoring up the liberal base in the Democrat Party. This statement has not moved the independent voter toward Kerry at all. And Bush did an excellent job of pointing out Kerry's proposed Hillaryesque Health Care "Reform."