Health Care Could Be Major Issue in Nevada Caucuses

The Nevada presidential caucuses on Saturday "could turn on how well the candidates address the United States' growing health care crisis," the New York Times reports. According to the Times, the state has an "unusually high number" of uninsured residents, a shortage of physicians and low Medicaid reimbursements. In addition, "health care safety nets are eroding" in the state, the Times reports.

A recent poll of 500 likely Democratic voters in the state found that, when asked about the "single most important issue in determining" the candidate that they would select, 20% cited health care -- the issue most mentioned after the economy, which 21% cited. The poll, conducted by Research 2000 for the Reno Gazette-Journal, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points (Steinhauer, New York Times, 1/18).

Obama Discusses Health Care Proposal
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) on Wednesday at the Henderson Convention Center in Henderson, Nev., said that health care reform efforts led by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in the 1990s failed because she conducted negotiations in private and that he would televise negotiations on his health care proposal on C-SPAN, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports (Harasim, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1/17).

On Thursday, Obama discussed his health care proposal in an interview with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle. He said, "I admire the fact that President Clinton and Sen. Clinton tried to reform health care (in the 1990s). But I believe they did it in the wrong way." He added, "Their theory was you go behind closed doors, you come up with your theory with the help of your technical experts. You don't even invite members of Congress from your own party into the negotiations and discussion. And while they were behind closed doors, the insurance company was busy shaping public opinion as well as maneuvering Congress, and by the time they released it ... it was dead in the water."

Obama said, "I would have a table, around which you'd have doctors, nurses, patient advocates. The insurance ...companies would get a seat at the table; they just would not get to buy every chair." He added, "I would put my plan forward ... and these negotiations would be on C-SPAN ... so the public would be part of the conversation and would see the choices being made" (Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/18).

Opinion Piece
Almost "all the candidates have approached health care as an issue to be addressed by government rather than an individual," but they also should "discuss what individuals could do to constrain costs," James O'Neill, director of the University of Delaware Center for Economic Education & Entrepreneurship, writes in a Wilmington News-Journal opinion piece. He writes that the "fundamental problem with today's system is we only pay for "sick care," adding that "perhaps the real answer to catastrophic health costs rests on the shoulders of each of us."

According to O'Neill, "Congress should be looking at how to empower individuals to alter lifestyles and significantly reduce the health care burden on the U.S. budget." He adds, "If we would embrace healthy behavior on a daily basis and the insurance system only paid for uncontrollable illness, we would have enough money to cover the uninsured population."

O'Neill concludes, "We need bold employers, employees, health practitioners and political leaders to take preventive medicine to the next level. We are the cure for our sick system" (O'Neill, Wilmington News-Journal, 1/17).