Newspapers recently published several editorials, opinion pieces and a letter to the editor addressing President Bush's fiscal year 2008 budget proposal and other health issues. Summaries appear below.
Editorials
Las Vegas Review-Journal: President Bush's "most visionary proposal" could be his plan "to de-link health insurance coverage from employment" and "end the tax-exempt status of employer-provided health insurance payments, while giving families a $15,000 income tax deduction for buying their own medical coverage," according to a Review-Journal editorial (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 2/6).
Raleigh News & Observer: Bush's budget proposal essentially "would just cut payments to doctors and hospitals" to "curb the growth of Medicare costs to the government," a News & Observer editorial states. "That the rest of us would pay more in health insurance premiums is something he doesn't address," and "cutting payments to physicians will mean more of them will be reluctant to accept Medicare patients," the News & Observer writes. The editorial adds, "The president's own health care plan -- a sizable tax deduction for the insured, a tax on business-provided health insurance -- is complicated by the president's desire to protect insurance and drug companies and likely has no chance in a Democratic-run Congress" (Raleigh News & Observer, 2/7).
Wilmington News Journal: The "rest of the nation may ... end up worse off" after "[m]embers of Congress, lobbyists and special interests of all stripes ... spend the next few months cutting and pasting" Bush's budget proposal, which would reduce "spending slightly for Medicare and Medicaid," a News Journal editorial states (Wilmington News Journal, 2/7).
Letter to the Editor
William Plested, New York Times: Bush's proposal would "eliminat[e] bias in the tax code that penalizes those who buy health insurance themselves," Plested, president of the American Medical Association, writes in a letter to the New York Times. According to Plested, a "long-term effort toward individual ownership of health insurance is important to help people maintain health insurance coverage regardless of changes in employment status -- as the coverage would follow people, not their jobs" (Plested, New York Times, 2/4).
Opinion Pieces
Holman Jenkins, Wall Street Journal: "The oft-mouthed goal of expanding health insurance to the poor would be far easier to achieve if we stopped subsidizing overconsumption by the non-poor," Journal columnist Jenkins writes in an opinion piece. Bush's plan would equalize "the treatment of health insurance whether you buy it yourself or your employer buys it for you," Jenkins writes. In addition, Jenkins writes that the "pattern" for Medicare "reform is already present between the lines -- towards greater reliance on saving than taxing, towards greater reliance on individual responsibility than on the illusory free-lunchism of government transfers" (Jenkins, Wall Street Journal, 2/7).
Ezekiel Emanuel/Victor Fuchs, Washington Post: Recent state and federal health coverage proposals that focus on covering the uninsured "fail to address either administrative inefficiency or long-term cost control" and "build on what everyone agrees is a broken system," according to a Post opinion piece by Emanuel, chair of the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the NIH's Clinical Center, and Fuchs, former president of the American Economics Association. They conclude, "Only comprehensive change of our broken system can provide universal, portable coverage, reduce inefficiency, control costs and secure health care for all Americans long into the future" (Emanuel/Fuchs, Washington Post, 2/7).
Jacob Sullum, Washington Times: Indifference to health care cost considerations is "one of the problems ... Bush wants to address by eliminating the tax code's bias in favor of employer-provided medical coverage, which distorts the insurance market, promotes insecurity and raises health care costs," nationally syndicated columnist Sullum writes in a Washington Times opinion piece. He concludes, "Eliminating the pernicious preference for employer-provided insurance would promote a greater diversity of options and help people choose the coverage that makes the most sense for them" (Sullum, Washington Times, 2/3).
Bill Roy, Wichita Eagle: Bush believes that with a health insurance tax deduction, "employers will provide employees with less-expensive, less-comprehensive policies," and that these "skinnier policies ... will make consumers prudent buyers who will get more health care for their buck," according an Eagle opinion piece by Roy, a retired physician and former Democratic member of Congress. The proposal "makes sense and smacks of fairness, but it also is analogous to pushing the huge balloon of health care expenditures one place and seeing if it bulges in another," Roy writes. He concludes that the proposal, "[a]t best," is "not an answer to current health care problems" (Roy, Wichita Eagle, 2/4).
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