‘Main Quarrel’ in Economic Stimulus Debate Likely To Stall Action to Help Uninsured, Kondracke Predicts

The "main quarrel" between Republicans and Democrats over health insurance for unemployed workers, which prevented an agreement on an economic stimulus bill last year, is a predictor of the upcoming "struggle" over larger proposals to help the uninsured, Roll Call Executive Editor Morton Kondracke writes in an op-ed. Kondracke outlines the proposals to extend health coverage floated by Democrats and Republicans last year. He says that most Democrats and labor unions, "wedded to the idea" that employers or the government should provide health insurance, "detest" the plan proposed by Republicans that would have provided individual tax credits to unemployed workers (Roll Call, 1/14). House Republicans in December passed a bill, backed by President Bush, that would have provided an individual tax credit to cover 60% of the cost of private health insurance for unemployed workers. Democrats, who oppose the plan, have proposed a 75% subsidy to help unemployed workers purchase health insurance through COBRA as well as funds to allow states to extend Medicaid coverage to unemployed workers who do not qualify for the program. COBRA, the 1986 Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, allows unemployed workers to retain health coverage under their former employers' insurance plans by paying 102% of the premiums (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 12/19). According to Kondracke, Democrats maintain that funds proposed by Republicans for tax credits "would be insufficient" to allow unemployed workers to purchase "adequate" health coverage. Democrats add that "few such policies were available." However, Kondracke writes that the Republican proposal "actually was $5 billion more costly" than the Democrats' proposal and "would have provided more insurance too, because employer policies" under COBRA "tend to cost twice as much" as private health insurance. He adds that eHealthInsurance.com lists about 3,000 individual health insurance policies offered by 100 companies that unemployed workers could purchase.

Ideological Redux?
Kondracke predicts that those "arguments will likely be rehashed" in 2002 in the debate over stimulating the economy and in the "bigger fight" over health coverage for the uninsured. Although Democrats could reach an agreement with Bush and Republicans on the issue of tax credits to help the uninsured, Kondracke warns that the "likelihood is that the same ideological differences that blocked the stimulus package will prevent action to help the uninsured." He concludes, "It's a sad commentary on the state of American politics. Forty million people lacking health coverage ... is a national scandal. And it's a scandal that politicians won't solve the problem" (Roll Call, 1/14).