Health care

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.