Wall Street Journal examines Presidential candidate proposals to address health care costs

Presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) each have announced proposals that seek to reduce health care costs, but "it is unclear how many of the candidates' ideas could actually make a dent in the rising cost of care," the Wall Street Journal reports.

According to the Journal, the candidates have proposed similar initiatives to address health care costs, including: providing consumers with more information to allow them to consider the cost and quality of medical treatments when they make health care decisions; promoting the use of generic medications and health care information technology to help reduce costs; and some form of medical liability reform.

McCain also has proposed to replace a tax break for employees who receive health insurance from employers with a refundable tax credit for the purchase of private coverage and to allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines -- both of which he maintains would promote competition among health insurers and reduce costs.

Gail Wilensky, an adviser to McCain, said, "The real answer is we don't know" whether the proposals from the candidates would reduce health care costs. She added that the alternatives include price controls and controlling the spread of new technology, which "gets real ugly real fast." Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, added, "Everybody is talking about the same kinds of things, but they are very difficult to do," adding, "If we started on the campaign trail right now, you'd be lucky to see the product of that in seven to 10 years, if everything was meshing right" (Meckler, Wall Street Journal, 4/28).

Cost of Proposals

Health care and other proposals from each of the candidates could "significantly swell the budget deficit and increase the national debt by trillions of dollars," the New York Times reports.

According to the Times, Clinton and Obama have acknowledged that their proposals "would be costly but have outlined how to pay for them," although "some fiscal monitors say they may be relying on overly rosy projections of how much savings their proposals would actually yield." Clinton has estimated that her health care proposal would cost about $110 billion annually, and Obama has estimated that his plan would cost as much as $65 billion annually.

McCain has "spoken vaguely about making entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare less costly for the government" to help finance his health care and other proposals, the Times reports (Rohter/Cooper, Times, 4/27).

Forum

Health care advisers to each of the candidates on Thursday at a forum hosted by the National Federation of Independent Business discussed proposals by the candidates to expand health insurance to more residents and reduce costs, CQ HealthBeat reports.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a policy adviser for McCain, said, "Rising spending on health care has been the biggest threat to the system. ... It is the reason we find employers dropping coverage" (Cooley, CQ HealthBeat, 4/25). He added, "We are paying far too much for the outcomes we get" (Wall Street Journal, 4/28).

Katherine Hayes of the Clinton campaign said, "It's really heard to get a handle on cost without addressing coverage," adding, "You can't open up the door (to tell) insurance companies that they have to take everybody ... if some people can wait until they're sick to enter the health care system."

Kavita Patel, an adviser to Obama, said that Obama and Clinton have "very similar" health care proposals, although the Obama plan would not require all residents to obtain health insurance (CQ HealthBeat, 4/25).

A webcast of the forum is available online at kaisernetwork.org.

McCain To Deliver Health Care Speech

McCain on Tuesday plans to deliver a major policy speech on health care at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, Fla., according to his campaign, the Tampa Tribune reports. McCain spokesperson Jeff Sadosky said the speech will focus on the cost of health insurance, "which Sen. McCain feels is the root issue for the health care crisis as a whole," as well as the need to focus on preventive care and other issues (March, Tampa Tribune, 4/26).

Opinion Piece

"For the last month, news media attention was focused" on the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, but, "as in the rest of the country this political season," information "about the candidates' priorities, policies and principles" on health care and other issues "too often did not make the cut," Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), writes in a New York Times opinion piece. She writes, "Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden's health care plan?" adding, "But let me guess, you know Barack Obama's bowling score."

According to Edwards, "[I]t's not as if people didn't want this information," but few "people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden's health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fundraising." Such "shallow news coverage" allows residents to "ignore issues and concentrate on things that don't matter," Edwards writes, adding, "If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we have to demand it" by "talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility" (Edwards, New York Times, 4/27).