Dow Jones Examines Individual Health Insurance Mandate Debate Among Democratic Presidential Candidates

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 29 Feb 2008 - 11:00 PST

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The "only major disagreement" between the health care proposals of Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) "appears to be whether to require uninsured people to buy coverage," Dow Jones reports. The Clinton proposal would require all U.S. residents to obtain health insurance, and the Obama plan would require coverage only for children.

Both candidates have said they would strengthen the employer-sponsored health care system and provide additional options for people whose employers do not offer coverage. Both candidates also have proposed regulations that would require insurers to accept all applicants regardless of pre-existing health conditions, and they both have proposed phasing out tax cuts to the wealthiest taxpayers and reducing wasteful spending to finance their plans.

During the campaign, Clinton has said that Obama's proposal would leave 15 million residents without health insurance. Obama has disputed that estimate and has said that his plan would make coverage more affordable.

According to Dow Jones, experts are "mixed about the importance of an individual mandate, or at least the timing of one," but many analysts "believe a requirement that individuals buy health insurance -- when paired with subsidies for people who can't afford it, effective purchasing pools and easy enrollment -- is a critical mechanism for extending coverage" (Gerencher, Dow Jones, 2/28).

Opinion Pieces
Summaries of several recent opinion pieces that address health care issues in the presidential election appear below.

• Gary Andres, Washington Times: Improvement of the U.S. health care system "requires several significant steps -- maybe not taken all at once -- and it demands more citizen education, consumer transparency, cost containment and personal responsibility, not just bigger government programs," Andres, vice chair of research and policy for Dutko Worldwide and a former White House senior lobbyist, writes in a Times opinion piece. According to Andres, presidential candidates "need to debate a broader menu of health care reforms beyond just how to cover the uninsured." He adds, "The real problem is health care costs -- a dimension of the issue" that likely Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) "emphasizes a lot more than do Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton." However, the "media's preoccupation with the universal coverage fight limits the dialogue," Andres writes (Andres, Washington Times, 2/28).
  
  
• Froma Harrop, Spokane Spokesman-Review: "Obama wants to give Americans the freedom to not buy insurance but the right to get government-subsidized coverage when they get sick," and the "inevitable result is that a lot of healthy people will avoid contributing to the insurance pool" because of the lack of incentive to "buy insurance at any price if they can glom onto a government program should disaster strike," syndicated columnist Harrop writes in the Spokesman-Review. According to Harrop, "It would make more sense to skip all this reliance on private coverage -- the heart of both the Clinton and Obama proposals -- and go to a Medicare-style government plan paid for through taxes" (Harrop, Spokane Spokesman-Review, 2/28).
  
  
• Deroy Murdock, Washington Times: "Before American voters embrace" health care proposals by Clinton or Obama, "they should consider the avoidable deaths that plague the mother of all state-run medical programs: Great Britain's big-government National Health Service," Murdock, a Scripps Howard columnist and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution, writes in a Times opinion piece. According to Murdock, the number of preventable deaths that occur in Britain "rebuff the notion that America's imperfect health care industry needs a booster shot of mandates and regulations." He concludes that "McCain's ideas -- among them, expanded health savings accounts; individually owned, portable health insurance policies available across state lines; and medical lawsuit reform -- are the antidote to the 'health care with a British accent' that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama would import, unless American voters stop them" (Murdock, Washington Times, 2/28).

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