Lawmakers Unlikely To Address Health Care Reform Until 2004 Elections, Kondracke Says

Lawmakers will not likely address the "perfect storm" in the U.S. health care system -- the combination of increased health care costs and reduced health coverage -- until the problem becomes an election issue in 2004, Morton Kondracke writes in his "Pennsylvania Avenue" column in Roll Call. The Bush administration has proposed to spend $89 billion over 10 years to provide tax credits to help uninsured U.S. residents purchase health coverage, but "that's a fraction of what it would cost to cover 45 million people," Kondracke writes. He adds that an administration proposal to cap noneconomic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits at $250,000 -- "its major initiative for cutting rising health costs" -- "looks moribund" in the Senate after Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) withdrew her support last month; the bill passed in the House last month. As a result, Kondracke writes, a Medicare prescription drug benefit bill, "whose chances of passage lobbyists estimate to be reasonably good," may represent the "only bid for a major health care accomplishment" proposed by the administration this year (Kondracke, Roll Call, 4/14).