What President Bush Said in His 2008 State Of The Union Address About Health Care
See the prior post reviewing his 2007 speech. You won't be able to tell the difference between this year and last.
President Bush's 2008 health care record will match his 2007 results--nothing was or will be accomplished.
It is not surprising that a President in his last year would not launch any new health care initiatives. He also barely mentioned the need to deal with our giant entitlement programs--including Medicare--in last night's State of the Union Address.
The President already has some big health care accomplishments to point to--albeit controversial ones. He dramatically expanded the old Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) into today's Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), passed the Medicare Part D drug program that covers millions of seniors, and greatly expanded private Medicare plans.
And there are millions more uninsured than there were in January 2001. Health care costs have doubled since 2000. The President accomplished none of his proposals to deal with either in spite of having a Republican Congress for six of his years in office. Critics point to the Part D program adding $8 trillion to the long-term unfunded Medicare liability.
This year, the Congress still faces having to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) before March 2009, when the current temporary extension expires, and again dealing with a broken Medicare physician fee system that will cut doc reimbursement by 10% this July and another 5% in January 2009. It is clear that this President is not going to engage in any serious way in working with the Congress to deal with these issues.
Democrats, and even some Republicans, would just as well put all the big decisions off until early 2009 when they hope a new Congress and a new President--Democrat or Republican--will be more interested in results.
Voters look for the next President and the next Congress to make a major effort to reform America's health care system.
Republicans may look back at those six years when they had the White House and both houses of Congress and wonder why they squandered an opportunity.
2 comments:
Agree.
Bush's record on healthcare is a mixed bag.
HSAs are great.
Medicare D depends on your point of view. Some believe it was enacted merely to hasten the insolvency of Medicare. If so, a wily move. Yet more likely it was just a ham handed poorly executed attempt to buy geezer votes with the public treasury. When will Republicans learn that they can't win a spending race with Democrats?
The Medicare physician payment mess is a disgrace.
Subsidy to private Medicare insurers is a related disgrace.
But in the end, the virtue of HSAs may trump them all.
We just completed two surveys of voter attitudes and values in health care. What is clear is that neither party is addressing what the public wants. The independents swing back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans and they are a large enough group at this point to make a major difference.
You can access our research on our home page: www.codebluenow.org
and go to Washington Pulse and Iowa Pulse.
We have more data coming out this week or early next.
Best regards,
Kathleen
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