NPR's 'Morning Edition' Looks At Proposals By Major Presidential Candidates To Limit Health Care Spending

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 25 Aug 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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NPR's "Morning Edition" on Friday looked at proposals by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) to limit health care costs.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior economic adviser, said that the candidate's plan to provide tax credits to help people buy health insurance would result in about 20 million to 30 million more insured people. He said, "It's going to be $5,000 toward every family's purchase of health insurance, something that basically would be a non-event for people already getting insurance from their employer. But for those who are buying it out of pocket, a lot of help there." The plan also aims to help people with pre-existing health conditions who cannot find affordable coverage, McCain has said. According to Holtz-Eakin, the plan would be budget-neutral because its costs would be balanced by a tax on contributions by employers towards health benefits. He declined to project how the plan would affect U.S. health spending, NPR reports.

Obama's plan, which would require many employers to contribute to workers' health insurance, eventually would reduce health spending by 8%, David Cutler, Obama's health adviser, said. The plan would not deny anyone coverage. Cutler said, "What we estimate is that Sen. Obama's health plan would reduce the cost of health care by about $2,500 for a typical family. That's a combination of direct out-of-pocket costs that the family no longer has to make and premium payments from their employers that families are now paying in the lower wages that they receive." In addition, with savings in government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the government would not need to collect as much in taxes to run those programs, NPR reports.

Both candidates have suggested increasing the availability of preventive care, promoting less-expensive generic prescription drugs and developing health information technology as ways to further reduce health spending, NPR reports. Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University, said such methods likely will not reduce health care costs in the long term, although they will "enhance quality of life" and provide more value for spending. He added that generic medications currently are widely used and that health care IT is expensive to implement and maintain (Silberner, "Morning Edition," NPR, 8/22).

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