John McCain's health as an asymmetric information problem

By Kathy G.

John McCain is a 72-year old man who is on at least five different types of medication and has a medical history that includes arthritis, high cholesterol, an enlarged prostrate, vertigo, and several bouts of a serious type of skin cancer. Given what we know about his medical history, not to mention his age (if he wins, he will be the oldest man ever elected to a first term as president), it seems reasonable to want know as much as possible about the state of his health.

The health of many people begins to rapidly decline once they hit their 70s. As the recent sad example of Ted Kennedy's brain cancer demonstrates, it's not uncommon for even seemingly hale and hardy people in that age group to be suddenly stricken with a serious, and possibly terminal, illness. To be blunt, the chances of John McCain dying or becoming incapacitated while in office are not small. And given the light experience, political extremism, and dangerous ignorance of the person McCain has chosen as his running mate, questions about McCain's health become an even more worrying concern.

Then why is it that the McCain campaign refuses to release John McCain's full medical records? For years, releasing a candidate's complete medical records has been standard practice for major party presidential candidates. The way the McCain has dealt with the medical records issue is highly unusual, to say the least.  As Robert Greenwald has pointed out:

For a very brief three hours in May, McCain released 1,173 pages of his medical records to a carefully selected group of reporters.  They were not allowed to make any copies or phone calls.

Pardon me, but this is highly suspicious. If McCain's medical history was entirely reassuring and he really were in excellent health, I doubt that the campaign would have dealt with his records the way they did. The campaign knows that voters have serious concerns about this issue, and if the medical records really were unproblematic, they wouldn't hesitate to release the whole enchilada to any reporter who asked, with no conditions and no strings attached.

In short, where McCain's health is concerned -- do I think the campaign is hiding something? You bet I think they're hiding something.

It's an asymmetric information problem straight out of Economics 102. The campaign knows the true state of McCain's health, and the voters don't. If the medical records are fine, then the McCain folks have every incentive to release them, since that would reassure voters. The fact that they have so severely restricted access is a clear signal that there's something seriously wrong there.

It's like one of those math problems they give you in Econ 102. When insurance is priced so high that the average person in the insurance pool would lose money, because the cost of the premium is higher than the value of the average expected benefit, pretty soon the only people buying the insurance will be those people who know they have a greater-than-average probability of needing it. For those folks, buying insurance is a clear signal that they are greater-than-average risks for the insurance company. Similarly, John McCain's refusal to release his full medical records is a sure sign that hat he's a serious risk for America.

Watch the new video that Robert Greenwald has made about this topic. And if you're a medical doctor, please sign the open letter asking for a "full, public disclosure" of McCain's medical records. 1,954 doctors have already done so.

Comments

[swampcracker]

Add this to the litany of conditions associated with aging: Early signs and symptoms of dementia, i.e. short-term memory loss. I am not talking about a convenient political memory with which to dodge inconvenient questions, this has already been observed by others.

[Bloix]

Note that the HuffPost report on his med records you link to reports his height at 5'6" - he claims 5'9". Another lie - No surprise there.

[McCain flack]

John McCain survived five years in a prison cell eating nothing but rice and licking the morning dew from flowers for water. You think he can't do eight years in the White House? And if death should be foolish enough to come knocking at his door McCain will just tell death to stop the bullshit, because country comes first, and John McCain isn't going to let a little thing like dying get in the way of him and serving his country.

[Sator Arepo]

How the hell do you get 1173 pages of medical records?