We need health coverage that leaves no child behind
Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:30 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleOct. 23 Daily News editorial
An Oregon Health & Science University study published in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association highlights an unexpected gap in health-care coverage. Working with federal health survey statistics, OHSU researchers found that some 2.4 million American children go uninsured in families with one or both parents covered by health insurance.
“These are working families,” Dr. Jennifer DeVoe, lead researcher for the study, told The Oregonian. “The vast majority — nearly 90 percent — have private coverage. They have access to health care; they just can’t afford to cover the kids.”
Blame the soaring cost of medical care, the same factor that’s pushed millions of American families into the ranks of the uninsured. High health-care costs have driven insurance premiums up to point where increasing numbers of small employers are having to choose between doing away with family health benefits or asking their employees to shoulder a larger share of the cost.
For the working families identified in this study, the choice has come down to leaving the children uninsured and hoping for the best. These are families with incomes too high to qualify for government help but too low to afford full family coverage. They have no safety net, and their numbers almost certainly can be expected to increase with the current economic downturn and unchecked health-care costs. This is just one more disturbing trend in a health-care system badly in need of a comprehensive fix.
Clearly, the next administration and Congress will come under considerable political pressure to provide that fix. They’ll have a number of plans to choose from, including a couple being touted by presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain. But the most promising plan, in our view, is one being pushed in the Senate by Oregon’s Ron Wyden and in the House by Washington’s Brian Baird. It would allow workers, rather than employers, to shop for their job-related insurance coverage. Empowering consumers could be expected to increase competition among both insurers and health-care providers. More competition and larger groups of people insured would likely lead to lower insurance costs.
The beauty of this plan is that it would lead to near universal coverage without a big investment of tax dollars. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation evaluated the plan last spring and concluded that it would become revenue neutral two years after it became fully operational and eventually generate budget surpluses. An earlier review of the plan by a Virginia-based health-care consulting firm, The Lewin Group, found that the plan could reduce the current health-care costs of private employers by nearly three-quarters and save about $1.4 trillion in national health-care spending over the next decade.
This health-care legislation has been on the table for at least two years now. It’s time the plan received the serious consideration it deserves.
Viewpoint wrote on Oct 23, 2008 12:30 PM:
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