Recent Opinion Pieces Examine Issues Related To Obama Health Care Proposals

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Also Included In: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 13 Jan 2009 - 5:00 PST

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Several recent opinion pieces discussed issues related to the health care proposals of President-elect Barack Obama. Summaries appear below.

• Grace-Marie Turner, New York Post: Obama "seems to believe the government should play a larger role" in health care, but the nation "already has an extensive system of taxpayer-financed medical care -- and Obama should take a closer look at its strengths and failings," Galen Institute President Turner writes in a New York Post opinion piece. According to Turner, U.S. health care expenditures in 2007 "totaled more than ... a sixth of our economy," with much of those expenditures paid by Medicare and Medicaid, and the "performance of public programs is troubling." Medicare and Medicaid "pay doctors, hospitals and others based on a government-determined fee schedule -- and those fees are often so low that many can't afford to treat such patients," she writes, adding, "Do we really want to add millions more people to public health programs where they'll have difficulty finding a physician?" Turner writes, "Just putting more money into the taxpayer-financed health sector is looking backward, not forward," concluding, "Instead, we should build a system that offers choice, competition and innovation -- and puts doctors and patients, not bureaucrats, in charge" (Turner, New York Post, 1/12).
  
  
• David Brown, Washington Post: "Over the next few months, this country will engage in the first serious national discussion on health care in 15 years," but "we're unlikely to hear ... something like this: Arresting the growth of health care spending in the United States is impossible. The policies and programs we're suggesting will either accelerate the upward trend or slow it temporarily, but they won't stop it," columnist Brown writes in the Washington Post. He writes, "We are on a collision course between our wish to live longer, healthier lives and our capacity to pay for that wish," and whether "we can somehow avoid the collision is perhaps the most important domestic issue of this century." Brown writes, "We will need something ... to rescue us from the Malthusian Spectre of health care spending," adding, "What it might be -- ah, that's what nobody knows" (Brown, Washington Post, 1/11).
  
  
• Robert Samuelson, Washington Post: "Obama talked somberly last week about getting the federal budget under control," and "he'll have to confront the rapid growth of health spending" to meet that goal, Washington Post columnist Samuelson writes. The U.S. health care system is "highly individualistic, entrepreneurial and suspicious of centralized supervision," Samuelson writes, adding, "In practice, Medicare and private insurers impose few effective controls on doctors' and patients' choices." According to Samuelson, because "most patients don't pay medical bills directly, they have little interest in using less care or shopping for lower-priced services," and health care providers "have no interest in limiting care." Samuelson writes, "We could change this. We could charge the elderly more for Medicare. We could tax employer-provided health insurance as ordinary income." He adds, "We could create a dedicated federal tax to cover government health costs -- if health spending increased more than revenue, the tax would automatically rise." Samuelson writes, "Will Obama be so bold? In the campaign, he proposed more, not less, health spending," adding, "It's easier to embrace the rhetoric of change than change itself" (Samuelson, Washington Post, 1/12).
  
  
• Robert Moffit, Washington Times: HHS Secretary-designate Tom Daschle has proposed to establish a Federal Health Board -- "a powerful body that would make key recommendations on the kinds of medical technologies, treatments, drugs and procedures Americans should have" -- and the details of the plan raise concerns, Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, writes in a Times opinion piece. According to Moffit, the board would "set rules for private health insurers who would participate in a new national pool," as well as "recommend benefit coverage, including drugs and medical procedures, to be included in all government health programs." In addition, the board would "'rank' therapies and medical services based on what the board determined to be their 'cost-effectiveness,'" Moffit writes. Moffit writes, "In short, Mr. Daschle's prescription for health care reform is centralized government control over our health care decisions by a powerful elite that will decide what's good for us and what isn't." He adds that, although the "health care sector of our economy is blessed with a treasure trove of professional expertise," the opinions of "those men and women ... wouldn't count" under the proposal (Moffit, Washington Times, 1/12).

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