Presidential Politics in Health Insurance and Health Care
As we get closer and closer to the presidential elections here in the U.S., more and more media outlets are focusing on the proposed policies and agenda's of our two candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. While one would expect their policies to differ dramatically due to the inherent differences in their parties philosophies, it's their differences in health care that we'll spend some time looking at over the coming weeks. Now I try to keep politics out of these articles, but right now it's nearly impossible to avoid, so I've decided to include them in as much of a balanced way as I can.
To that effect, we have a couple of articles that look at the health care policies of both candidates. The first, entitled, "Report Compares Health-Care Platforms of Presidential Candidates," comes to us from The Washington Post. In this article, author Amanda Gardner cites a recent report released by The Commonwealth Fund in which they look at the proposed policies for both candidates. In their report, they find that McCain's plan, in their opinion, will be more costly and erode customer protections while increasing administration costs, and would not lead to universal coverage.
Obama's plan, however, shows "greater potential for making care more affordable, accessible, efficient and higher quality," though they say his plan will come short of covering everyone. Obama has stated, however, that universal coverage is his goal, and his plan would expand coverage of both Medicare and SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program). The report seems to favor Obama's plan, in conclusion, citing that McCain's would cost much more (costing a projected $185 billion while Obama's would cost a projected $86 billion) and again, increase the administration costs needed to oversee the various programs. It'll be interesting to see if they're right.
The other article we looked at, entitled "McCain, Obama agree: health care needs fixing," comes to us from The San Francisco Chronicle. This article take critical looks at the health care proposals of both campaigns. According to the article, McCain's plan is relatively untested in any other part of the world, and is much more radical, proposing a barebones approach that would put more power into the hands of consumer and insurers. Obama's plan builds upon the existing system but also expands upon it to give people more choice, as well as mandating health insurance coverage for children.
Experts agree that both plans are costly, and that both will most likely fall short of their intended goals. They are also critical of both campaigns being vague on the specifics of their plans. They do agree, however, that the Obama plan does make more strides towards taking care of the uninsured than McCain's plan. However, Obama's plan will cost more in the long run than McCain's. Ultimately, the experts agree that neither of the candidate's plans will be wholly accepted into law because there's so much divisiveness on the issue.
It'll be interesting to see where this issue goes both before and after the election. It's nearly as big a topic of concern to most Americans as the economy right now, so it's foremost on the mind of many people, several of whom will be voting next month. We'll keep track of these issues to see where it's going while trying to remain impartial and not support an individual candidate or platform. This might be harder as the campaign goes on, however, but we'll see. I hope you've enjoyed this installment of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup, and thank you for your time. Have a great day.
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