Opinion Pieces Address 2008 Presidential Election

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 10 Oct 2007 - 5:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Summaries of opinion pieces addressing the issue of health care in the 2008 presidential election appear below.

• Deroy Murdock, Boston Herald: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) "presidential juggernaut looks increasingly unstoppable," which might have "emboldened" her "to stop masquerading as a moderate and instead flaunt her full-throated, left-wing radicalism," columnist Murdock writes in a Herald opinion piece. Clinton's SCHIP reform would "air raid cash on Americans," and her "spend-o-rama accelerated" with "her latest government-medicine scheme," which "would cost taxpayers $110 billion annually," according to Murdock. He concludes, "With their worst possible nightmare lurking around the corner, Republicans urgently must coalesce around the GOP contender best prepared to shear Hillary Clinton's blond ambition" (Murdock, Boston Herald, 10/8).
  
  
• Heiko Wijnholds, Richmond Times-Dispatch: "Unfortunately, the argument" over health care reform "is usually set in stark alternatives -- public or government versus private funding," Wijnholds, a marketing professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Business, writes in a Times-Dispatch opinion piece, adding that this approach "is misleading as it omits the possibility of an effective blend of the two." The challenge is to "convince voters and legislators to abandon their myopic mindset" and "let them embrace the idea that an adequate, affordable universal health care system is possible once all the key aspects are properly and honestly addressed," according to Wijnholds. He concludes, "After all, some countries have done so without relying on ineffective, heavily socialized medical systems. Are we any less wealthy, resourceful, responsible?" (Wijnholds, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10/8).
  
  
• Michael Tanner, Washington Examiner: In the debate over a national health care system, "the question is whether you, together with your doctor, will make your most personal and important health care decisions," or whether "the government will make them for you," Tanner, the Cato Institute's director of health and welfare studies, writes in an Examiner opinion piece. "Government-run health care systems are all about limiting choices," an approach that results in "rationing of care," either "directly by denying certain procedures altogether" or "indirectly by limiting the availability of modern medical technology," he adds. Tanner continues, "National health care sounds wonderful," with its "promise of health care for everyone --for free, no less," but in "reality, it cannot deliver what it promises." The "politicians are still happy to make the promise anyway. All they want in return is our freedom," Tanner writes (Tanner, Washington Examiner, 10/4).
  
  
• William Murchison, Washington Times: Health care plans proposed by Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) all seem to assume that "America yearns for the comeback of paternalism," according to a Times opinion piece by syndicated columnist Murchison. All three plans "compromise freedom and respectable economics in a way many Americans are unprepared to endorse," Murchison notes. He continues, "With growing titillation Big Brother -- or Sister -- casts a watchful eye our way" (Murchison, Washington Times, 10/6).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation© 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

• Additional
• References
• Citations