The 2008 Presidential Candidates’ Health Reform Proposals

[RedEarth]

By Sara R. Collins, Ph.D., and Jennifer L. Kriss
The Commonwealth Fund
January 15, 2008

This report analyzes the health care proposals of eight Democratic and Republican 2008 presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Dennis Kucinich, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney. Their approaches to health insurance reform fall into three categories: 1) proposals that emphasize tax incentives for obtaining insurance through the individual market (Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney); 2) proposals that build on existing private and public group insurance with shared responsibility for financing coverage (Clinton, Edwards, Obama); and 3) proposals that aim to cover everyone through publicly sponsored insurance systems like Medicare (Kucinich). The report examines differences among the proposals, and evaluates them against key principles like affordability, provision of essential services, financial protection, streamlined administration, and fair financing.

.....more at the link......

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

The policy principles listed above are key to moving us toward a high-performance health system - except one. Avoiding “dislocation” by allowing an individual to elect to continue with a private plan that limits choice of providers, limits benefits, and requires greater cost sharing does not move us closer to a high-performance system but is included for pure political reasons to appease those individuals who remain uncomfortable with the concept of a public insurance program that they don’t fully understand. All of the other principles listed should be an integral part of comprehensive reform.

Of the three basic models for reform, the Republican proposals that would use tax incentives for purchasing private, individual health plans can be dismissed as being non-responsive to the key principles listed.

In contrast, the concluding comments of this report seem to equate the private-public group insurance model of the three leading Democratic candidates with the public insurance model of Dennis Kucinich in their potential to move the health care system toward high performance. They conclude that pragmatism favors the private-public model since it would result in less “dislocation.” But you need to read the full report to see if they have made a case for equivalence of the private-public and the public models of reform.

The quotations in the following comments are from the Commonwealth Fund report.

“Both Republican and Democratic candidates, with the exception of Kucinich, envision a health insurance system that continues to be structured around private insurance markets with a supporting role played by public insurance programs.”

.....more of comment at the link......


http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/january/commonwealth_fund_on.php

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. great link

and now we have experts telling us that the Dems have the right ideas when it comes to health care! Good link to share!