The presidential candidates have many issues to address: gas prices, the economy, energy and the environment, foreign policy…and the list goes on. But where do the Republican and Democratic candidates stand on issues that affect people who are caring for aging parents?
AgingCare.com researched John McCain and Barack Obama’s stances on health care and caregiving in this side-by-side comparison.
Issue | McCain | Obama |
Coverage for the uninsured | Provide a variety of insurance choices, nationwide and across state lines, for people to choose from. Opposes universal health care.
Offer tax credits of $2,500 and $5,000 for families to help pay for coverage. Establish a Guaranteed Access Plan (GAP) by working with governors to develop a model that states could follow to assure high-risk patients have access to health coverage. Eliminate the tax deductibility of employer-sponsored health insurance. Establish a nonprofit corporation that would contract with insurers to cover patients who have been denied insurance and could join with other state plans to enlarge pools and lower overhead costs. There would be reasonable limits on premiums, and assistance would be available for Americans below a certain income level.
| Make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses. Guaranteed eligibility, with no one turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.
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Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) | Sick days should be negotiated between management and labor. He called Obama's proposal to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act "a big-government solution." | Expand the FMLA to cover businesses with 25 or more employees. Expand the FMLA to cover more purposes, including allowing workers to take leave for elder care needs; allowing parents up to 24 hours of leave each year to participate in their children's academic activities at school; and allowing leave to be taken for purposes of caring for individuals who reside in their home for 6 months or more. |
Caregiver Discrimination at Work | Currently not addressed in his platform. | Protect against caregiver discrimination: Commit the government to enforcing recently-enacted Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines on caregiver discrimination. |
Medicare/Medicaid | Supports expanding prescription drug coverage under Medicare. Reform the payment system to cut costs. Compensate providers for diagnosis, prevention and care coordination. Medicaid and Medicare should not pay for preventable medical errors or mismanagement. | Expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function. Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper prescription drug prices and to extend the enrollment period for low-income beneficiaries. |
Social Security | Allow workers to invest a portion of their payroll tax in private accounts which they manage themselves. | Protect Social Security and ensure it is solvent and viable for Americans, now and in the future. He would ask those making over $250,000 to contribute more to Social Security to keep it sound. |
Chronic Care | Provide cheaper care for chronic disease. Dedicate more federal research to caring and curing chronic disease. | Currently not addressed in his platform. |
Taxes | Make President Bush's tax cuts permanent for individuals and businesses. (Those tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2010.) Eliminate the alternative minimum tax. Originally designed to make sure millionaires pay taxes, the AMT is now affecting millions of middle-income taxpayers. Supplement Social Security with personal accounts — but not as a substitute for addressing Social Security benefit promises that he believes cannot be kept. | Eliminate income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000 a year Reverse President Bush's tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers and provide 150 million low- and middle-income workers a tax credit of up to $500. Eliminate income taxes for seniors earning less than $50,000 a year and triple the earned-income tax credit — to $555 — for full-time minimum wage workers. Institute a mortgage tax credit for homeowners who don't itemize deductions, and make the research credit permanent. |
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