Invest in Sprinklers, Not Just Fire Trucks

Rather than spend $700 billion dollars to bail out our financial sector (that’s $700,000,000,000), perhaps some earlier preventive action would have been far less costly. Obama was certainly correct to emphasize that point in the first debate:

Obama: The question, I think, that we have to ask ourselves is, how did we get into this situation in the first place?

Two years ago, I warned that, because of the subprime lending mess, because of the lax regulation, that we were potentially going to have a problem and tried to stop some of the abuses in mortgages that were taking place at the time.

Last year, I wrote to the secretary of the Treasury to make sure that he understood the magnitude of this problem and to call on him to bring all the stakeholders together to try to deal with it.

The continuing escalation of health care expenses will be our next crisis. Just this week, two separate reports found that family health care deductibles increased 29% in just the past year, and that 57 million Americans live in families struggling to pay their health care bills.

As with the financial crises, only one presidential candidate seems to realize that preventive action is needed to avoid a crisis. Obama’s health care advisor David Cutler recently explained:

In today's health-care market, less than one dollar in 25 goes for prevention, even though preventive services -- regular screenings and healthy lifestyle information -- are among the most cost-effective medical services around. Guaranteeing access to preventive services will improve health and in many cases save money.

McCain’s plan would do just the opposite. By forcing people to buy health insurance on their own (rather than through their employer), more people will end up with more expensive, high-deductible plans. These plans may not cover preventive care, and even in those that do, the high deductibles will discourage people from seeing their doctors in non-emergency situations. In the long run, McCain’s plan will increase costs and lower standards of care at the same time – the worst of both worlds. No wonder 74% of employers think McCain’s health care plan makes no sense.