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Posted: April 29, 2008 11:47 AM
McCain's Aims at Health-care Reform in Latest Tour
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Republican Sen. John McCain, his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, kicked off yet another tour Monday, touting his plan for health-care reform in what’s being billed as his Call to Action Tour, not to be confused with last week’s Time for Action Tour, which focused on America’s “forgotten places.”

Touring Miami Children’s Hospital Monday morning, McCain met with patients and their families to answer questions about his health-care ambitions for the country, the New York Times reported.

The Arizona senator has proposed a plan promoting competition among health-care providers in an effort to keep costs down. Citizens would be allowed to buy out-of-state policies in order to find the best rates and plans for their families, “but some health care analysts worry that states would jettison their own regulations and protections in an effort to remain competitive,” according to the Times.

McCain also faced criticism from Elizabeth Edwards, a cancer patient and wife of former Democratic presidential hopeful and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who compared McCain’s health-care plan to President Bush’s S-CHIP program, a children’s health insurance initiative, which has failed to pass in Congress.

“What you are seeing from John McCain is really a version, the health care version, of what President Bush is trying to do,” she said, according to CBS News. “Basically, John McCain’s health care program works very well if you happen to be rich and healthy and not very well if those are not the descriptions of you.”

During a round-table discussion with health care professionals in Miami, McCain attacked Democrats’ health-care proposals, saying, “They want government to make the decision,” CBS News reported. “I want the family to make the decision as to what kind of health care they want for their children.”

The candidate will continue his health care tour this week with stops in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa and Colorado. The tour comes on the heels of his “Time for Action Tour,” which led him through parts of Alabama and Louisiana, including New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, an area badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina. There, McCain criticized the Bush administration for its handling of the Katrina disaster.

Since winning enough delegates to secure the Republican nomination in early March, the senator has embarked on several fundraising tours, as well as a Middle East fact-finding trip as part of his Senate Armed Services Committee work and a Service To America Tour as a way to re-introduce himself to voters and emphasize key locations in America throughout his lifetime. The tour featured stops in Mississippi, Virginia, Maryland, Florida and Arizona at places where McCain and his family members were trained and remembered for their military service.