Health Plan Used by U.S. Is Debated as a Model
By REED ABELSON
New York Times
It makes for a compelling stump speech. And the leading Democratic candidates for president are all saying pretty much the same thing: adapt the health care program that covers Congress and offer it to the 47 million Americans currently without insurance.
“The American people should have access to the same array of health care choices and benefits as the senators and representatives they elect,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said as she introduced her health care plan last month.
Mrs. Clinton’s main rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards, have made similar proposals to expand the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
The program gives members of Congress, along with about four million other active and retired government workers, a wide array of private insurance offerings with fairly generous benefits. But if this would be health care reform, it is reform with a small “r,” according to many nonpartisan experts.
While health policy experts acknowledge that the federal employees’ program could be a workable way to reach some of the uninsured, they also say there is nothing about it that would help address what they see as an underlying reason for the growing numbers of uninsured: the nation’s runaway medical costs. And without major changes, they say, the model would be sharply limited in achieving the goal of universal coverage for all Americans.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
It makes for a compelling stump speech. And the leading Democratic candidates for president are all saying pretty much the same thing: adapt the health care program that covers Congress and offer it to the 47 million Americans currently without insurance.
“The American people should have access to the same array of health care choices and benefits as the senators and representatives they elect,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said as she introduced her health care plan last month.
Mrs. Clinton’s main rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards, have made similar proposals to expand the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
The program gives members of Congress, along with about four million other active and retired government workers, a wide array of private insurance offerings with fairly generous benefits. But if this would be health care reform, it is reform with a small “r,” according to many nonpartisan experts.
While health policy experts acknowledge that the federal employees’ program could be a workable way to reach some of the uninsured, they also say there is nothing about it that would help address what they see as an underlying reason for the growing numbers of uninsured: the nation’s runaway medical costs. And without major changes, they say, the model would be sharply limited in achieving the goal of universal coverage for all Americans.
(Continued here.)
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