What do you know? Under John McCain’s health care reform plan, insurance companies could exclude pre-existing conditions such as his own recurrent melanoma. Of course, McCain doesn’t need to worry about this, because he has the Cadillac care provided to all members of Congress.

Elizabeth Edwards, who could likewise be excluded under McCain’s plan because of her history of breast cancer, has called McCain on his hypocrisy. Click the link above to read nyceve’s important diary on the subject.

On a related note, Dr.SteveB, who like nyceve advocates a single-payer health care system (that is, like Medicare, but covering every American), reports on a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine. A nationwide survey of 2,193 physicians

showed 59% “support government legislation to establish national health insurance,” while 32% oppose and 9% are neutral. That’s a solid majority of American doctors, and up 10% from 49% in 2002 when a similar study was last done.

This is an excerpt from the article in Annals of Internal Medicine:

Support among doctors for NHI has increased across almost all medical specialties, said Dr. Ronald T. Ackermann, associate director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at Indiana University’s School of Medicine and co-author of the study.

“Across the board, more physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy,” he said.

Dr.SteveB has more on the story if you click the link.