Presidential Debate 2 Post #22

Watching the second presidential debate I was not very impressed by the way the candidates performed. In this debate the topic of healthcare is brought up a great deal. All of this information from the debate was very helpful. During the debate John McCain was asked to put healthcare, energy, and entitlement reform: social security and Medicare into an order of priorities. He replied back saying that all three of them could be worked on at once and that the reform of our entitlement programs was very important. He says “As far as health care is concerned, obviously, everyone is struggling to make sure that they can afford their premiums and that they can have affordable and available health care. That's the next issue. But we can do them all at once. There's no -- and we have to do them all at once. All three you mentioned are compelling national security requirements.” Barack Obama is then asked to for a comment and he says that healthcare is his second priority “because that broken health care system is bad not only for families, but it's making our businesses less competitive.” McCain later says that healthcare and energy can be dealt with at the same time with the participation of all Americans working together to solve the problems. John McCain is then asked about his two years for reform of entitlement programs. He says that social security is not tough because we know what the problems are and how to fix them. He then talks about Medicare which is a little tougher. Its tougher because of the very complex and difficult issues. He says that with Medicare we have to have a commission, the smartest people in America, come up with recommendations and then base-closing commission idea and have Congress vote up or down. The question on whether or not healthcare should be treated as a commodity came up. McCain says “And we need to do all of the things that are necessary to make it more efficient. Let's put health records online, that will reduce medical errors, as they call them. Let's have community health centers. Let's have walk-in clinics. Let's do a lot of things to impose efficiencies.” Following this questions they are asked if healthcare is a privilege, right, or responsibility. John replies with, it’s a responsibility because we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member.