Democratic Presidential Candidate Clinton Announces Proposal To Increase Funds for Breast Cancer Research

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) on an episode of the "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" scheduled to air on Monday announced a proposal that would provide an additional $300 million in annual federal funds for breast cancer research, the AP/Contra Costa Times reports.

Under the proposal, NIH, the National Cancer Institute and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program at the Department of Defense would use the funds to find treatments for breast cancer and study potential genetic and environmental causes of the disease. As president, Clinton told DeGeneres, she would set a goal of finding a cure for the disease within 10 years. In addition, the proposal also would seek to make breast cancer screenings more affordable for low-income women through the elimination of Medicare copayments for such tests and other measures.

Clinton also announced a proposal to study racial disparities in diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer (AP/Contra Costa Times, 4/7).

Opinion Pieces
Summaries of several opinion pieces and a letter to the editor related to health care issues in the presidential election appear below.

• Marie Cocco, Albany Times-Union: A recent survey conducted by Indiana University School of Medicine indicates that physicians are "way ahead of politicians in daring to go where the rest of the industrialized world has already gone: to a national health insurance system," syndicated columnist Cocco writes in the Times-Union. The presidential campaign has "offered a bumper crop of politicians and a thicket of platitudes about the American health insurance system," but only former Democratic candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) proposed a single-payer system, Cocco writes. According to Cocco, an "increasing proportion of the public" is "warming to national health insurance," despite the "caveat that taxes might have to be raised to pay for it." She adds, "It's the politicians who are lacking in courage, too cautious to confront the fear tactics that the insurance industry, the drug industry and other big players roll out every time" (Cocco, Albany Times-Union, 4/5).
  
  
• Gregory D'Angelo, Salt Lake Tribune: The health care proposal announced by Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) "would only push health care costs higher," D'Angelo, a policy analyst with the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, writes in a Tribune opinion piece. Among other provisions, the proposal would establish the National Health Insurance Exchange, a "regulatory agency empowered to set benefits and determine the terms" under which U.S. residents could obtain health insurance, D'Angelo writes. According to D'Angelo, under the proposal, "Washington bureaucrats would run the health insurance markets in every state." He adds that Obama could "change the federal tax code, offer health care tax credits or direct assistance to the needy, and allow Americans to purchase insurance across state lines" to "create a real national market characterized by personal choice, private competition and portability of coverage" without "creating a new federal bureaucracy" (D'Angelo, Salt Lake Tribune, 4/4).
  
  
• Wayne Madsen, Raleigh News & Observer: The "bold and progressive" health care proposal announced by Obama "should be able" to expand health insurance to the "47 million Americans not now covered" and improve coverage for "tens of millions" of underinsured U.S. residents without "breaking a national treasury already depleted by six years of costly and unnecessary war," Madsen, a contributing writer to Online Journal, writes in a News & Observer opinion piece. According to Madsen, the proposal, which would allow all residents to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, is a "model of fairness" that would "send shockwaves through a health insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical troika that has drained our wallets and preyed on our physical and mental well-being for decades" (Madsen, Raleigh News & Observer, 4/4).
  
  
• Mendel Zilberberg, Washington Times: "Health care in America is in crisis," but the presidential candidates have announced "at best one-dimensional" proposals to address the issue, Zilberberg, president and CEO of One World United, writes in a Washington Times letter to the editor. According to Zilberberg, each candidate has "mapped out their own particular approach," but none of their proposals "discuss how we will begin to pay for the resulting benefits." He adds, "We must seek meaningful and tangible ways to diminish the actual cost of health care." In the event that "we fail to keep an open mind and neglect to recognize that, as a complex problem, the answer must be multidimensional, we will not be able to adequately address our needs" Zilberberg concludes (Zilberberg, Washington Times, 4/6).