Health care: Make it affordable, available to all
The Des Moines Register’s Editorial
December 3, 2007
All the major presidential candidates have one thing in common: They’ve gotten help from taxpayers to pay for their health insurance.
Members of Congress — from Sen. Hillary Clinton to Rep. Tom Tancredo — are eligible for taxpayer-subsidized benefits. (Plus, a fully staffed physician’s office is available at the Capitol for flu shots and exams.) Current or former governors and a former mayor have benefited, too.
Having taxpayers help pay your health-insurance bills is a great deal if you can get it. Those vying to lead the country have gotten it. But some of them don’t think all Americans should have it.
Republicans in particular denounce “government-run” health care while offering ideas of questionable value, such as medical-malpractice reform. A 2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office found that malpractice costs account for less than 2 percent of health-care spending.
Or they want to offer tax credits for those who buy their own health insurance, without saying how low-income families would come up with the cash up front. Or they say that allowing consumers to “shop” for health care will drive down bills, even though it’s virtually impossible for consumers to determine how much hospitals, insurers and others charge for care.
Preaching “personal responsibility” in health care is not going to result in making insurance more affordable for Americans. These are not plans. They are misguided ideologies.
Here’s another puff of hot air: Candidates of both parties talk about transitioning to electronic medical records. Do it — it would save lives. But then they say it would save billions, without saying how they’d guarantee the money would go to consumers instead of software developers’ and providers’ bottom lines.
Democrats generally take the better approach. Their proposals include expanding Medicare, now restricted to those 65 and older, to cover more people. Or they would allow Americans to buy into a new public program or sign up for the same plan members of Congress enjoy. We have some reservations, however, about mandating that Americans buy health insurance. If the government forces people to purchase insurance, it must ensure the coverage it makes people buy is adequate. And any plan that would push people into the private sector moves the country in the wrong direction. Private is not necessarily better than public when it comes to health insurance.
The current patchwork system of health care isn’t working for the 47 million uninsured Americans and the millions more who are underinsured. Too many Americans are an appendicitis attack or a broken bone away from financial trouble. Medical debt and illness contribute to bankruptcies. And American employers are burdened with the increasing cost of health care while trying to compete in a global economy.
A candidate’s approach to health-care reform is an important consideration in the 2008 elections. Does he or she have a credible plan to insure everyone at reasonable cost?
In weighing candidates’ plans, realize a truth about this country’s hodgepodge health-care system: Public dollars already support health insurance at every turn. About a third of all Americans are covered by programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and the Veterans Administration, funded with tax dollars.
So this country already has a tax-financed system of health care. It just isn’t efficient or fair. It leaves working Americans to pay for their own care while subsidizing care for others. They’re forced to buy private insurance plans that are tangled in red tape and administrative waste.
Everyone should be able to buy into a uniform government program such as Medicare. And that brings us to Rep. Dennis Kucinich. He’s not a viable candidate in other ways, but he’s right about health care. He recognizes the need to adopt a nonprofit national system of health care that insures everyone.
That’s considered an extreme position by many Americans. But extreme is what’s needed when it comes to health-care reform. Americans should welcome a Medicare-like program for everyone.
Like Kucinich, we have long advocated a so-called “single-payer” system, in which the government is the payer for services delivered by private-sector hospitals, doctors and clinics. That’s not socialized medicine. Patients would still choose their own doctors. Yet red tape and administrative costs would be cut dramatically.
Something is seriously wrong when presidential candidates accept taxpayer-subsidized health care for themselves and push warm, fuzzy labels such as personal responsibility as a plan to fix the system for the rest of the country.