Schwitzer health news blog

Bush's Health Care Point Man

The Wall Street Journal profiles Allan Hubbard, the President's college buddy who is also now the President's point man on health care reform.

His big push is for health savings accounts, in an attempt, the Journal says, to "make health care work more like a market, with well-informed consumers shopping for the best deals."

Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt thinks Hubbard's ideas are overly simplified. Reinhardt told the Journal that he's reminded of President Clinton's health care guru, Ira Magaziner, who also treated complex problems as if they were simple.

So the Journal turned to Magaziner, who said that more price transparency would help, but health care will never be like other markets. "If you try to make it a pure market, the younger and healthy are the ones who benefit," he says. "That's not the way to run a society."

Hubbard is quoted saying, "When you ask the American people what's the biggest problem facing our country, at the top will be terrorism in Iraq, but the number-one domestic issue will be health care."

Too bad it didn't get that kind of attention in the last election.