New York Times, Investors’ Business Daily Columnists Examine Health Reform Efforts
The following is a summary of two opinion pieces in today's newspapers examining different facets of the current health care reform debate:
- New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes that some doctors' refusal to accept new Medicare patients because of low reimbursement rates "is just the beginning of a struggle that will dominate American politics." He states that the debate represents a "collision between an irresistible force (the growing cost of health care) and an immovable object (the determination of America's conservative movement to downsize government)." He adds that fixing Medicare will call for "a lot of government spending." But according to Krugman, the "conservative movement in general, and the Bush administration in particular, are not prepared to make the money [needed for fixing Medicare] available." Krugman writes that the White House is "trying to fake it," with a fiscal year 2003 budget proposal that offers about $300 billion less for Medicare over the next decade than the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office anticipates needing. Krugman concludes, "Something will have to give, and soon. ... [W]e must either come up with more money or deny health care to retirees" (Krugman, New York Times, 3/19).
- Investor's Business Daily columnist Tom Gray writes that because neither side in "Washington's health care wars seems to have a practical, near-term answer ... employers may have to find their own solutions." He proposes that "defined contribution" health plans, in which "employers give workers money to buy their own coverage," could be a possible solution. Such plans could help "create a new class of smart health consumers if the process is given enough time." Gray concludes, "There's no obvious reason why attitudes toward choice in health care can't change in [a] gradual way -- as long as the stress is on the gradual" (Gray, Investor's Business Daily, 3/19).
