Brownstein of LATimes gives Kerry Kudos!

[kerrygoddess]

Good commentary in the LATimes about healthcare and Kerry's proposal during the campaign. Brownstein points out that Kerry has goals for healthcare this year, while the Repubs have done diddly...

Controlling Health Care Costs
20 June 2005

Ron Brownstein discussed health care in the LA Times today. He notes that Republican proposals are unlikely to do much to affect health care costs:


There's no silver bullet for controlling medical costs. The inability of even a massive consumer like GM, with its vast bargaining power, to hold down its bills belies the simplistic suggestions from Bush and conservative thinkers that transferring more of the cost to individuals will significantly reduce costs by making patients smarter consumers.

He has a more favorable view of John Kerry's health care proposals:

The best domestic policy idea that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) produced in his 2004 presidential campaign directly addressed that problem. Kerry proposed that Washington assume 75% of the cost for any patient whose annual health expense reaches $50,000. One leading analyst estimated that change alone could reduce health insurance premiums by 10%.

Kerry plans to embody his proposal in legislation this year. Frist hasn't progressed as far toward a specific plan, but he has proposed a public-private partnership that could absorb more risk for the most expensive cases from individual insurers.

What else? Allowing Medicare to bargain directly for prescription drugs would establish benchmarks that could lower the massive pharmaceutical costs now inflating healthcare spending. (GM alone spends about $1.5 billion annually on prescriptions.) More creative efforts to encourage fitness would reduce the incidence of expensive illnesses, such as diabetes, linked to a widening (sorry) obesity problem.

MORE & LINKS - http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=1110

[Dr Fate]

1. Few can top Kerry's actions on domestic issues.

He gets credit for that, no doubt.

I'm sick of the TV media & Republicans claiming "DEMs dont have any ideas" out of one side of their mouths, but ignoring folks like Kerry when they present really great ones.

[LittleClarkie]

2. We were discussing this in the Kerry forum

While foreign policy seemed to light Kerry up more, domestic policy seemed to be more of an intellectual exersize. The Mass. folk in the forum think they see a change in Kerry since the election. Maybe because of the stories he heard on the trail, it seems to be more of a mission for him to do something about health care.