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While the health care plans of Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama have understandably gotten most of the attention, there is another proposal working its way through Congress that might be better than all three. Read more
Hillary Clinton was right. No, we don’t mean she should have been the Democratic presidential nominee. We mean that in one of the most riveting, contested primary fights in American history, Clinton was on the right side of the one substantive issue on which she and Barack Obama differed: Meaningful health-care reform should include a mandate requiring all Americans to have health insurance.
The United States can no longer pretend that the problems of its health-care system can be solved by private employers. The number of uninsured Americans is approaching 50 million. The Institute of Medicine, a federal advisory group, estimates that nearly 20,000 Americans die each year because they lack access to care that basic insurance would afford them. Employer health-care costs in the U.S. manufacturing sector amount to $2.38 per worker per hour, compared with less than a dollar for foreign manufacturers. If trends continue, the U.S. will devote 29 percent of its gross domestic product to health care by 2030 while remaining the only major industrialized country in which tens of millions have no health coverage. That’s madness, as even John McCain seems to grudgingly concede.
Senator McCain wants to make insurance more affordable by giving families tax credits for buying it, but he would not require them to do so. Senator Obama goes further, but he would mandate coverage only for children.
We believe that the elusive grail of universal coverage will be attained only when individuals are required by law to obtain health insurance and the government makes it easier for them to afford it—by subsidizing the cost for lower-income families and regulating new competitively priced plans that are available to everyone.
Americans don’t like mandatory anything, yet even Republican Governors Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger decided that individual mandates were needed as part of meaningful health-care reform at the state level. (Romney succeeded in Massachusetts; Schwarzenegger was thwarted by Republican legislators in California.)
The health-insurance market is unlike that for ordinary widgets, and a level of coercion is necessary. Under comprehensive reform legislation that includes individual mandates and creates new markets for group insurance—markets in which insurers would not be able to cherry-pick customers by denying coverage to sick or older Americans—rates will come down as young and healthy individuals are forced onto the rolls and insurers charge fairly standard rates regardless of a person’s medical condition.
Just as society can’t afford to have people take chances by forgoing auto insurance, we can no longer afford to live in a country where one in six people lacks health insurance. The next administration should not be modest about its aspirations for health care, but the legislative details will have to emerge from Congress. So it’s a good thing Senator Clinton will be there, still prodding whoever becomes president to do the right thing.
The United States can no longer pretend that the problems of its health-care system can be solved by private employers. The number of uninsured Americans is approaching 50 million. The Institute of Medicine, a federal advisory group, estimates that nearly 20,000 Americans die each year because they lack access to care that basic insurance would afford them. Employer health-care costs in the U.S. manufacturing sector amount to $2.38 per worker per hour, compared with less than a dollar for foreign manufacturers. If trends continue, the U.S. will devote 29 percent of its gross domestic product to health care by 2030 while remaining the only major industrialized country in which tens of millions have no health coverage. That’s madness, as even John McCain seems to grudgingly concede.
Senator McCain wants to make insurance more affordable by giving families tax credits for buying it, but he would not require them to do so. Senator Obama goes further, but he would mandate coverage only for children.
We believe that the elusive grail of universal coverage will be attained only when individuals are required by law to obtain health insurance and the government makes it easier for them to afford it—by subsidizing the cost for lower-income families and regulating new competitively priced plans that are available to everyone.
Americans don’t like mandatory anything, yet even Republican Governors Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger decided that individual mandates were needed as part of meaningful health-care reform at the state level. (Romney succeeded in Massachusetts; Schwarzenegger was thwarted by Republican legislators in California.)
The health-insurance market is unlike that for ordinary widgets, and a level of coercion is necessary. Under comprehensive reform legislation that includes individual mandates and creates new markets for group insurance—markets in which insurers would not be able to cherry-pick customers by denying coverage to sick or older Americans—rates will come down as young and healthy individuals are forced onto the rolls and insurers charge fairly standard rates regardless of a person’s medical condition.
Just as society can’t afford to have people take chances by forgoing auto insurance, we can no longer afford to live in a country where one in six people lacks health insurance. The next administration should not be modest about its aspirations for health care, but the legislative details will have to emerge from Congress. So it’s a good thing Senator Clinton will be there, still prodding whoever becomes president to do the right thing.
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