McCain Opposes Mandating Health Insurance Coverage

Sen. McCain said he does not support outlawing the “cherry-picking” that some health plans do to make certain they insure mostly healthy people. Outlawing cherry-picking “would be mandating what the free enterprise system does.” Instead, he favored broadening the high-risk pools that states use to provide coverage for some of their uninsured residents. “I would rather go that route than mandate that health insurance companies under any condition would have to accept a certain level of patients. … One reason is that we have seen in the past that [insurance companies] have a great ability to game the system.”

The senator said in an interview that he favors reforms to the malpractice system. “I would like to see that any medical provider or doctor who stayed within medical guidelines would then not be sued.”

A 'very large portion' of the uninsured 'are healthy young Americans who simply choose not to' sign up for it. SEN. MCCAIN