During the morning drive today, NPR ran through John McCain's healthcare plan, which isn't really a plan so much as a plot to throw sick people to the wolves. But what struck me most wasn't how ineffectual McCain's plan would be (make private insurance cheaper...somehow), but how dramatically he apparently misunderstands the fundamental nature of the health care crisis in this country. Senator McCain believes:

The problem is not that most Americans lack adequate health insurance...The biggest problem with the American health care system is that it costs too much.

Which of course ignores the millions of people who have health insurance but still can't get adequate health care. And the millions of people who have become uninsurable because of prexisting conditions. Those people aren't John McCain's concern apparently, and why would it be since his goal is protecting insurance companies? What's even more shockingly ignorant though is the parallels he tries to draw with other national programs. McCain flatly rejects the notion of mandated health insurance (a debatable issue, granted) with the argument that he wants everyone to have a college education too, but he's not going to force it on them. Unfortunately for McCain, this country mandates over a decade of education already. You know- the basic level necessary to reasonably function in modern society? Yeah, that one. Which is exactly what a health insurance mandate would be doing. So either McCain doesn't realize that kids are required to go to school in this country (rather unlikely), he doesn't understand what a health insurance mandate is (also unlikely, but less so), or he's just being willfully deceptive and dishonest with the country (I think we have a winner). It's amazing not only that he thinks he can get away with this, but that the people in this country deserve to be treated with this sort of intellectual contempt. I can't wait to beat this guy.