Thompson Today Expected to ‘Flesh Out’ Bush Plan To Cover Uninsured Through Tax Credits
HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson is scheduled to appear on Jan. 30 at a Washington, D.C.-area health center to "fles[h] out" the Bush administration's plan to provide health benefits to the country's uninsured, the AP/Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reports. Bush said during his State of the Union address last night that he wants to "give uninsured workers credits to help buy health coverage." The plan will be "essentially unchanged" from a proposal Bush made while running for president, the AP/Star-Telegram reports, and will give tax credits -- $1,000 for individuals, $2,000 for couples -- to low-income people who don't owe federal income taxes, "meaning they would get money from the government to help buy insurance." Last year's proposal, estimated to cost $71.5 billion over 10 years, would have given the uninsured a credit "only if they bought insurance" and earned less than $30,000 per individual, or $60,000 per couple.
Additional Proposals
Thompson also is expected to announce three additional aspects of the plan, the AP/Star-Telegram reports. First, the plan would "recycle" $3.2 billion originally allocated for state CHIP programs but returned to the federal government after states failed to use the money. The funds would be available for states to "expand" CHIP and Medicaid to more low-income children or to their parents. Second, Bush's plan would allocate $1.5 billion for community health centers, an 8% increase over this year's funding. Finally, Bush is expected to propose $350 million for Medicaid families who are in the transition from welfare to work.
Democratic Opposition
While Republicans "champion" Bush's "free-market approach" to solving health care problems, including the tax credit plan, Democrats "generally prefer" providing coverage through state-run programs such as CHIP, the AP/Star-Telegram reports. According to Democrats, state-run plans "guarante[e] a basic package of benefits," in which patients don't have to "shop around" to find care (Meckler, AP/Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 1/30). Tax credits were a sticking point in the collapsed negotiations over an economic stimulus bill last year. A Republican-backed bill that passed the House contained tax credit provisions. But Democrats said that tax credits would "leave unemployed workers little leverage" with insurers and would represent a "step toward dismantling the system of employer-provided health insurance" (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 1/2).
