Health care

[petardier]

Have you taken a look at Bush's health care proposal? Here's a link to one misleadingly subtitled article (Bush, Kerry propose incremental changes to health care)

ABC health plan article

Bush's proposal to eliminate employer-funded health care doesn't strike me as incremental; it's radical. Here's how the article describes it.

"The Bush vision is quite radical. He essentially is dreaming of a world where 
there is no employer-provided insurance," said Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist at 
Princeton University. "You buy your own insurance, but you pay the first $2,000 to 
$4,000 per year out of your own pocket." 

Do you trust George Bush to implement a non-employer funded health care system in such a way that it's affordable for the poor, middle class, and elderly? I don't. Health Savings Accounts might be a good idea on paper, but you have to have money to put away to begin with. The government's failure to include any attempt to negotiate on drug prices in the new Medicare drug benefit should be clue as to who will benefit if this plan is ever implemented.

On the other hand, Kerry's plan to find a way to cover more people strikes me as more inclusive, but far less radical. I'm a bit concerned about the part where the government picks up most of the cost for catastrophic cases, but I expect it will be possible to design the system to prevent abuses.

Comments

I don't get it...

[(Anonymous)]

I read about this, including the thread in the Dailykos, but I don't get where they are getting their conclusion that he is proposing eliminated employer-funded healthcare. Obviously I'm no fan of the Resident, but his proposed policies only seem to make it less painful to employees when employers actually do cut healthcare.

Still, give me Kerry's proposals anytime--much more commonsense.

Re: I don't get it...

[petardier.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm going by the comment in the quote above, but you're right; there's isn't more about that in the article. For contrast, here's the GWB web site page that talks about health care.

http://www.georgewbush.com/agenda/chapter.aspx?ID=2

They do mention wanting to find ways to let small businesses band together to get lower costs. There's also repeated reference to to low-premium high-deductable policies. Will those end up being useful to the those who lack coverage now? Given the mess that was made of the recent Medicare drug benefit, I still have reservations.

I'll have to see if I can find more elsewhere on this topic.

Re: I don't get it...

[(Anonymous)]

For the less-than-well-off, there are only two kinds of coverage: the kind where you can't afford the premium, and the kind where you can't afford the deductible. Frankly, I don't get the American fear of single-payer universal coverage for basic health care. The free market is a good thing when the market is free; when payment is extorted at the price of your life, that ain't a free market. (Looking abroad for counter-arguments? Underfunded health systems elsewhere stem from two things -- the reluctance of taxpayers to pay for that which would only cost them more in a privately-funded system, and the ridiculous profit to be made in the US, which drives the price of equipment and "labour". Voters who, when faced with a choice between tax cuts and adequately funded infrastructure, choose tax cuts deserve what they get.)