Editorial, Opinion Piece, Letter to the Editor Address Health Care Issues in Presidential Election

Summaries of an editorial, opinion piece and letter to the editor about health care issues in the presidential election appear below.

Editorial
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) "both promise to keep America strong, free and prosperous," but "neither one offers many hints about how he will pay for those promises," a Wilmington News Journal editorial states. According to the editorial, Obama and McCain "are, at best, only giving lip service about reforming the costs of the nation's biggest entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid." The editorial states, "Simply put, the nation can't afford either senator's promises" on health care and other issues, as "neither senator has addressed the far harder problems fixing Medicare and Medicaid, which threaten to eat up much more of the budget before the end of the next decade" (Wilmington News Journal, 7/9).

Opinion Piece
"Some liberals fret that Barack Obama is tacking to the center," but the move is "overdue" and will continue "on core priorities like schools, taxes and health care," Matt Miller, host of the public radio program "Left, Right & Center," writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. Miller recommends that Obama focus on three policy areas, including health savings accounts "done right. He writes, "Liberals sensibly reject 'consumer-directed health plans' loved by Republicans when these plans' high copays and deductibles put undue burdens on the sick and the poor," but "there's a simple way to structure such plans to address these concerns while still bringing consumer incentives to bear on runaway health costs." Miller adds, "The answer is to require such plans to limit the total medical costs a person can incur in a year to a reasonable percentage of income." According to Miller, by "calling for annual out-of-pocket maximums to be tied explicitly to earnings, Mr. Obama would forge a new 'third way' on health care and cast himself as an innovator not beholden to the far left view that market forces should play no role in health care at all" (Miller, Wall Street Journal, 7/11).

Letter to the Editor
"Contrary to the assertion" a New York Times article, McCain's "health plan is neither 'radical' nor 'more fundamental than the universal coverage' plan proposed by Senator Barack Obama," Alan Cohen, a professor of health policy and management and executive director at the Boston University Health Policy Institute, writes in a New York Times letter to the editor. Cohen writes, "Granted, Mr. McCain's plan includes improvements to the current tax treatment of health benefits that would aid citizens who now buy insurance individually," but "his proposal to expand state high-risk pools is not a panacea." He adds, "It might benefit a relatively small percentage of Americans, whereas Senator Obama's plan would reach many more people and is more likely to address the key problems of access, cost and quality that plague our health care system." Cohen concludes, "Unfortunately, Senator McCain's prescription for system reform is merely a Band-Aid when nothing less than major reconstructive surgery is required" (Cohen, New York Times, 7/11).