Bush: Kids’ Health Care Will Get Vetoed
(AP) – President Bush again called Democrats “irresponsible” on Saturday for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children’s health insurance program.
“Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know will be vetoed,” Bush said of the measure that draws significant bipartisan support, repeating in his weekly radio address an accusation he made earlier in the week. “Members of Congress are risking health coverage for poor children purely to make a political point.”
In the Democrat’s response, also broadcast Saturday, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell turned the tables on the president, saying that if Bush doesn’t sign the bill, 15 states will have no funding left for the program by the end of the month.
$500,000: Amount the war in Iraq costs per minute, according to a new analysis by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard’s Linda Bilmes, put out by the American Friends Service Committee. The study finds that this $720 million a day could buy homes for 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children.
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“The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
September 23, 2007
Editorial
The Battle Over Health Care
One of the enduring frustrations of presidential elections is that candidates and their parties sound like Tweedledum and Tweedledee on many issues. In 2008, when it comes to health care, which is emerging as a defining domestic issue, voters will find stark differences in philosophy and commitment between Democrats and Republicans.
The three leading Democratic candidates all want to achieve universal or near universal health insurance coverage. The four leading Republican candidates espouse no such goal and barely mention the uninsured. The Democrats are willing to put substantial federal money into health care reform. The Republicans are not. The Democrats would expand government health insurance programs and give the federal government a greater role in regulating the insurance industry. The Republicans generally want to shrink federal programs and free the insurance industry from what they consider regulatory shackles.
Compared with these sharp differences between the two parties, the distinctions between leading candidates within each party are small, mostly a matter of tactics to achieve comparable goals. We far prefer the Democrats’ approach to health insurance, since at least they want to address an issue that must be resolved for reasons of economics, public health and fairness. Sadly, none of the leading candidates, in either party, has the vision or the political courage to propose radical solutions for the big underlying problem behind America’s health care crisis: the inexorably rising costs.
see link for candidate proposals…..
WHAT’S MISSING
All of the plans, both Republican and Democratic, fail to provide a plausible solution to the problem that has driven health care reform to the fore as a political issue: the inexorably rising costs that drive up insurance rates and force employers to cut back on coverage or charge higher premiums. All of the plans acknowledge the need to restrain costs, but most of the remedies they offer are not likely to do much.
Electronic medical records to eliminate errors and increase efficiency, more preventive care to head off serious diseases, and better coordination of patients suffering multiple, chronic illnesses are all worthy proposals, but there is scant evidence they will reduce costs. Proposals to import drugs from abroad, allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, restrain malpractice expenses, increase competition among health plans, and empower consumers to shop more wisely for medical care might help a bit. But many experts doubt that any of this will truly put the brakes on escalating health care costs.
No top candidate in either party has broached more drastic remedies, like limiting the use of expensive new technologies, cutting reimbursements to doctors and hospitals, or forcing people to use health maintenance organizations. And no one has suggested imposing higher taxes on everyone, not just the wealthy, to finance universal coverage. These solutions are not even discussed on the campaign trail lest they alienate voters and interest groups.
At this stage, the various plans should be considered as broad outlines of where the candidates want to go, with details to be worked out later. Voters who put a high priority on covering all or most of the uninsured will prefer the Democrats’ approach, as we do. The chief danger is that the Democrats have a tendency to imply that everyone can be covered with good benefit packages without inconveniencing anyone but the wealthy. Their cost and savings assumptions will need thorough analysis when more detailed plans emerge.
Voters who put a higher priority on reshaping the health care system along free-market lines than on achieving universal coverage will prefer the Republican plans. Those plans’ likely impact on costs will also need to be analyzed when more details emerge. The “magic of the market†may be less than magical.
Given the wide split between Republican and Democratic approaches, the polarized politics in Washington, and the overriding need to find a way out of the morass in Iraq, it will be an uphill battle to achieve consensus on health care any time soon. But at least voters will have a clear choice of which way the candidates are headed.
Health care is voters’ top domestic concern
Think Progress
Senate passes children’s health insurance bill despite veto threat
* Story Highlights
* Senate passes children’s health insurance bill with a 67-29 vote
* Bush vows to veto expansion of State Children Health Insurance Program
* Measure expands program by up to 4 million children
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Senate voted 67-29 Thursday night to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance program by up to 4 million children, a measure President Bush has vowed to veto.
The bipartisan House and Senate deal, according to two House aides and a Senate aide, would add $35 billion more to the current $25 billion, for a total cost of about $60 billion over five years.
The extra funds would come from a proposed 61-cent-per-pack cigarette tax, the aides said.
“The President will veto this bill because it directs scarce funding to higher incomes at the expense of poor families. We encourage Congress to send the President a continuing resolution extending SCHIP so coverage for the children who rely on the program will not be threatened,” the White House said in a statement.