Copyright 2000 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY
April 13, 2000, Thursday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 16A
LENGTH: 518 words
HEADLINE:
Bush, Gore plans fail to hit right balance for uninsured
BODY:
At last count, 44 million Americans lacked
health insurance, leaving
them to suffer through minor
illnesses in misery and tolerate
major ones until they became critical. At
the same time, the majority
of those who do have health
insurance are locked into plans that
are frequently inadequate,
inefficient and downright hostile to
needed care.
It's not a
pretty picture, nor even an acceptable one. Yet so
far, the presidential
candidates show little talent for improving
matters. George W. Bush's vision
offered Tuesday hopes to expand
coverage by offering tax
credits that bear little relationship
to real-world costs.
Vice
President Al Gore's proposal takes a different approach,
focusing on
expanding public health programs. Doing so is more
efficient. But it's also
less likely to ensure meaningful health-care
choices.
The key
element in the new Bush plan is pretty simple. He would
give a tax credit
worth up to $ 1,000 to uninsured individuals
to help defray the cost of
health insurance. Families would get
up to $ 2,000. This means, Bush says,
that a family earning $ 30,000
a year could buy $ 2,000 worth of health
insurance for only $ 18.50
a month.
Great, but where's a family
going to find such a plan? On average,
families buying their own insurance
pay more than three times
as much. So even with a $ 2,000 tax credit, it's a
safe bet that
relatively few $ 30,000-a-year households would be able to
scrape
together the extra thousands.
For this reason, the Bush
tax credits would expand coverage to
3 million or 4 million insured
Americans at most. That's not bad,
but it's not great, either. More
promisingly, Bush wants to expand
the state/federal Children's Health
Insurance Program (CHIP),
which provides coverage to low-income children.
That makes sense.
A successful push could cover an additional 7 million
children.
That's twice as many people as the Bush tax credit would insure.
Yet the CHIP proposal is secondary in Bush's plan. By contrast,
Gore's
plan would expand the CHIP program to include more children
and their
parents.
Side by side, the two proposals highlight each other's
flaws.
Bush relies mainly on tax credits, which promote choice but are
inefficient. Gore emphasizes the expansion of government-run programs,
which are more efficient but provide fewer choices.
The right
plan is one that ties universal access to meaningful
options. Erstwhile
presidential candidate Bill Bradley offered
one such outline, suggesting
that individuals might buy into the
insurance program now available to
federal workers. Doing so would
have provided uninsured Americans access to
affordable care from
a long list of options.
Tax credits may be
a part of any politically viable proposal to
expand health coverage. But
just a part.
To that end, the Bradley plan is a useful marker of how
choice
and expanded coverage can work together. Against it, the Bush
plan, in particular, lacks balance. Today's debate: Expanding
health
insuranceBradley's proposal did better job of offering
choice,
affordability.
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC, B/W, Quin Tian,
USA TODAY, Sources: Employee Benefit Research Institute and USA TODAY research
(Line graph)
LOAD-DATE: April 13, 2000
