Battle Over Health Reform Resurges as Health Costs, Uninsured Population Increase

Almost 10 years after President Clinton unsuccessfully attempted to overhaul the nation's health care system, lawmakers are slowly beginning to "figh[t] some of those [health care] battles again," the Dallas Morning News reports. Rising medical costs and an increasing number of uninsured people will help boost health care as a prominent policy issue, experts say (Dodge, Dallas Morning News, 5/5). Thomas Mann, a politics and government expert at the Brookings Institution, said, "If I were to single out any single issue as a dominant one on the policy horizon, it would be [health care]" (Lewis, Copley News Service/San Diego Union-Tribune, 5/5). Robert Moffit, director of domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, agreed, saying that health care as a campaign issue is "coming very soon." Henry Aaron, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said he believes that health care will "gain political traction" by the 2004 presidential election. He said, "As premiums rise, employers will chafe. And if the ranks of the uninsured go up four (million) to five million a year, then by 2004 we could see the issue back on the political center state." Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) said that although a "big political showdown" may not come for a few years, health care reform is already being debated in "smaller skirmishes" over issues including a Medicare prescription drug benefit, patients' rights, health benefits for American workers displaced by international trade and mental health parity (Dallas Morning News, 5/5). Lawmakers may be hesitant to propose "more ambitious" health care reform because of the growing federal deficit and "bad memories" of Clinton's health care "debacle," Copley News Service/San Diego Union-Tribune reports (Copley News Service/San Diego Union-Tribune, 5/5).