Washington Post Opinion Pieces Examine Health Care Reform Issues

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 10 Jun 2008 - 6:00 PST

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Summaries of two Washington Post opinion pieces that address health care reform issues appear below.

• Jane Bryant Quinn, Washington Post: U.S. employers "want to keep their hand in" the health care system, but because "they consider the current system unsustainable" and "know that tinkering won't change the picture," they are "backing some surprising fundamental changes," Post personal finance columnist Bryant Quinn writes. She writes that the ERISA Industry Committee has proposed the New Benefit Platform for Life Security, which would allow employers to purchase health insurance through "large, third-party benefit administrators, all of them competing for the business." Under the plan, employers also could retain their current health insurance, and individuals and small businesses could purchase coverage through NBPLS, Bryant Quinn writes. "The hope is to strengthen the employer's hand," and large "regional benefits administrators with huge pools of employees should be able to strike better deals," according to Bryant Quinn. "What do the corporations want from health care providers that they're not getting now?" she writes, adding, "Smarter cost controls, expanded health information technology, administrative efficiency and a clearer look at whether the plans are cutting costs by cutting corners." According to Bryant Quinn, although "everybody talks change, ERIC's proposal is just one entry," and no "consensus has emerged on what a new system should look like," in part because "not enough voters are desperate enough to gamble on a change." The more employers "retreat from their workers and retirees, the bigger the constituency for government-based overhaul," and that "might be the best option in the end," she writes (Bryant Quinn, Washington Post, 6/8).
  
  
• Michael Millenson, Washington Post: The "major obstacle" to proposals that would expand health insurance to all residents is that those "with insurance simply don't care very much about those without it," Millenson, a health care consultant and author, writes in a Post opinion piece. He writes, "If a lack of health coverage were truly a white middle-class crisis, then conservatives and liberals would long ago have joined together, carved out a compromise and done something," rather than offer a "constantly recycled set of excuses for legislative stalemate." According to Millenson, the Republican position on the issue "can be boiled down to the three 'nots': not our voters, not our kind of solution and not our priority." Meanwhile, Democrats have sought to "reassure the middle class that the cost of compassion will be covered by repealing tax cuts for the wealthy," a proposal that might "tax credulity but ... does avoid the need for discussing other taxes," he writes. Millenson adds that public interest groups also have "exhibited little appetite for genuinely grappling with the uninsured problem." He writes that the U.S. "has gradually provided a medical safety net for the elderly and disabled (Medicare), the poor (Medicaid) and veterans" despite the costs, adding that residents "understand that the true value of these programs must be weighed on a moral scale as well as a financial one" (Millenson, Washington Post, 6/8).

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