Newsweek Examines Health Care, Other Major Issues For Next President

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 24 Jan 2008 - 9:00 PDT

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The Jan. 28 issue of Newsweek examined six major issues -- such as problems with the U.S. health care system -- that face the next president.

According to Newsweek, the U.S. spends about $2 trillion annually on health care but "ranks poorly on a variety of key health indices." The system is "riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management, and inappropriate care, waste and fraud," according to the National Coalition on Health Care.

In addition, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey, U.S. residents have more concerns about health care costs than they have about job security, mortgage payments or terrorist attacks. "There's a big decision for the next president about whether to make health reform a big priority," Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said.

Some residents also have concerns about a lack of adequate funds for research, as the NIH budget likely will decrease by 3% this fiscal year. The next president also will have to address a number of "politically sensitive" issues, such as stem cell research and prescription drug safety, Newsweek reports (Barrett, Newsweek, 1/28).

Clinton Video Criticizes Obama on Health Care
Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday released an online video that criticizes rival Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for shifting his support of a single-payer health care system, The Hill reports. The video compares statements about health care that Obama made at an AFL-CIO conference in 2003 to those he made at a debate in South Carolina on Monday.

At the conference, Obama said, "I happen to be a proponent of single-payer universal health care coverage." He added, "But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House." During the debate, Obama said, "I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single-payer." He added, "What I said was: If I were starting from scratch, if we didn't have a system where employers typically provided health care, I would probably go with a single-payer system."

Clinton said, "We have seen ... a kind of evolution here. When Sen. Obama ran for the Senate he said he was for single-payer," but, as "time went on ... he said he was for single-payer in principle, then he was for universal health care." She added that his current health care proposal "is not universal" because of the lack of a requirement that all U.S. residents obtain health insurance. The proposal would require health insurance for children and implement measures to make coverage more affordable.

In response to the video from Clinton, Obama said that his positions on health care have not changed, only her "presentation of my positions, which has happened frequently in this campaign" (Barr, The Hill, 1/22).

Opinion Pieces

• Cal Thomas, Washington Times: Judicial Watch has obtained records from the Clinton Presidential Library that "reveal the internal workings and attitudes of people associated with Hillary Clinton's National Task Force on Health Care Reform" in the 1990s, which "penetrate Clinton's carefully crafted personae, expose her true character and suggest what she and her Democratic allies would impose on the nation, if given the power," syndicated columnist Thomas writes in a Times opinion piece. According to Thomas, efforts by the task force to "impose an unworkable plan on an unsuspecting public was bad enough, but the pain HillaryCare supporters were prepared to inflict on opponents demonstrates insensitivity in the extreme ... tells voters all they need to know about her and about her team's tactics and objectives should she become president." He adds, "Had opponents not prevailed, we might be standing in line for health care like they are in Canada and Britain" (Thomas, Washington Times, 1/23).
  
  
• Peter Pitts, Washington Examiner: "On both sides of the political aisle, presidential candidates have labeled universal health coverage as the moral challenge of the decade," but, whether a "government-run health care system" is "the best way to bring this about ... depends on whether you want your health insurance and medical services to be provided by the same folks who run the Department of Motor Vehicles and Federal Emergency Management Agency," Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, writes in an Examiner opinion piece. He adds, "Look abroad and you'll see the disastrous effects of a government takeover of the health industry," such as waiting lists for "serious procedures" and price controls that have "caused an atrophy of the European pharmaceutical industry." According to Pitts, "Such dirty secrets are why most advocates of universal health care harp exclusively on access to insurance," although "access to health insurance is not a problem for most Americans." He adds, "Our current system may be problematic," but the "'free lunch' promised by advocates of government-run health care is anything but" (Pitts, Washington Examiner, 1/22).

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