Thanks to American Health Line, a product of the National Journal, for rounding up newspaper editorial comments on the President's pending push for expansion of health savings accounts:
* Baltimore Sun: "Making health care choices is not like buying an automobile -- nor should it be" -- but Bush in his State of the Union address on Tuesday is expected to argue that "Americans would be getting more value for the billions of dollars the nation spends on health care if comparative shopping was part of the process," a Sun editorial states. According to the Sun, the proposal does not address "the major source of expense, which is the relatively small share of the population who are very sick," and would "discourage preventive care and screenings ... that can save the big bucks of late-stage treatments for patients whose ailments are caught early" (Baltimore Sun, 1/30).
* New York Times Magazine: Bush has a "general absence of ambition" on the issue of health care and has focused on "modest initiatives that don't begin to address the structural deficiencies in the system," reporter Matt Bai writes in an NYT Magazine opinion piece. He writes that HSAs, which "are the centerpiece" of the health care proposals that Bush plans to announce in his State of the Union address, "will help some families afford their doctors' bills -- but that's assuming they already have enough money to both buy a plan and save extra money in the first place." According to Bai, "That Bush embraces such proposals, at the expense of more lasting reform, fits the larger pattern of his presidency." (Bai, New York Times Magazine, 1/29).
* Washington Post: Proposals by Bush to make U.S. residents more responsible health care consumers through increased out-of-pocket costs are "misguided," in part because most "consumers aren't equipped to distinguish between good medical service and bad," a Post editorial states. According to the editorial, "Bush may be about to go after the wrong target using the wrong tool" (Washington Post, 1/30).
Posted by schwitz at January 30, 2006 04:39 PM | TrackBack