Health care ‘storm’ major campaign issue
A “perfect storm” continues to batter the U.S. health care system, and there’s a danger that the Bush administration’s favored barrier against it — medical malpractice reform — will never get built.
The National Coalition on Health Care, the broad-based group that first used the storm image to describe the combination of rising costs and shrinking insurance coverage, now estimates that 45 million Americans lack health insurance — up from the federal government’s estimate last year of 41.4 million.
The coalition, comprising corporations, unions and pension plans, based its new calculation on data showing that health insurance costs rose by 12.7 percent last year and will go up by 15 percent this year, causing employers to drop workers from coverage.
In addition, the weak economy is causing increasing numbers of workers to lose their jobs — and insurance coverage — and states are cutting back on Medicaid coverage.
The nine Democratic presidential candidates appearing last week at a forum sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund made it clear that the health insurance crisis will be a major issue in the 2004 presidential race.
They were unanimous in accusing President Bush of pushing tax cuts for the wealthy instead of health coverage for workers and the poor, and all of them vowed to expand coverage by freezing or eliminating his cuts.
The administration has proposed — and the Congressional Republican budget resolution contemplates — spending a mere $89 billion over 10 years to provide a tax credit for the purchase of health insurance, but that’s a fraction of what it would cost to cover 45 million people.
The administration claims that its major initiative for cutting rising health costs — capping malpractice awards — would save between $60 billion and $108 billion a year by eliminating the need for doctors to perform unnecessary tests and procedures solely to avoid lawsuits.
But that proposal, which passed the House, now looks moribund in the Senate because of a withdrawal of support from its only Democratic sponsor, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).
The House bill — and the administration proposal — calls for a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages (“pain and suffering”) in malpractice jury awards, the level currently in place under California law.
“I believe that California’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act has helped limit the growth of medical malpractice premiums and a national version of this bill could help address the malpractice premium crisis, which is threatening access to health care patients around the nation,” Feinstein said March 20.
However, Feinstein determined that a compromise was necessary to have any hope of passing a malpractice bill in the Senate, which requires 60 votes to overcome a threatened filibuster from allies of the trial lawyers’ lobby, mainly Democrats.
Passing a drug benefit for seniors will not quiet the “perfect storm” roaring through the health system and battering low-income workers and their families.
It will be addressed eventually, after it’s a major issue in 2004.
(Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.)