Health Care Reforms

When it comes to meeting the health-care needs of 42.6 million uninsured Americans, these candidates must be an awful disappointment to their political mentors, Presidents Bush and Clinton. The son, Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush, offers a tax subsidy to help families buy private insurance. But the paltry, $2,000 credit is less than half what the elder Bush offered in 1992, in a time of crushing deficits, not surpluses. The president Al Gore serves once fought for universal health coverage.

Conservatives fought Social Security, Medicare and the weekend when they were proposed. But once enacted, Republican and Democratic Presidents embraced all three as they became part of American life. We can expect President Obama's court-tested health-care reforms — which shift payment for uninsured people's health care from hospitals to taxpayers — will also go on, even if Republican Mitt Romney is elected President. Veteran Philadelphia investor James M. Meyer, of Tower Bridge Advisors, which manages $1 billion in other people's money, wrote a thoughtful account of the costs, purpose and likely durability of "Obamacare," in a note for clients of the West Conshohocken-based investment brokerage Boenning & Scattergood: "Republicans want to repeal the law. Indeed, the House will vote on or about July 11 to try and do just that.

Before we begin dissecting the proposed health-care reforms of the Clinton administration, it should be noted there is one element not included in the voluminous document: trust. Do we trust Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton enough to allow them to completely renovate America's health-care system? We put our safety and lives in the hands of other people every day. We either trust them because of our personal experience with them, or we trust them implicitly because of their training and the standards enforced in their profession.

The U.S. health-care system is a victim of its own success, says one Main Line hospital official. Leland White, president of Paoli Memorial Hospital, said in a talk at the hospital Thursday night, "What drives up the price of health-care in the country are the same things that make it is so successful," such as the quality of care and technology. Speaking to an audience of about 60 interested in learning more about the proposed health-care reforms, White explained the effect of President Clinton's proposals and fielded questions from the crowd.

Dr. John Hansen has good news for President Clinton. The 38,000 members of the Group Health Cooperative in Madison, Wis., will pay only 6 percent more for their health care next year. That's about half of this year's increase. The President should also be pleased by what's happening in Maine. Under a new state program to curtail unnecessary medical tests, only about 50 percent of emergency-room patients are undergoing X-rays. Before, 95 percent had the exam whether they needed it or not. In Minneapolis, United Healthcare, a large managed-care organization, recently issued its first "quality report card" on member physicians and hospitals.

Emboldened congressional Republicans are predicting a rocky couple of years ahead for the health-care overhaul that they disparagingly call "Obamacare" - as they hatch plans to scuttle the law by holding up funding for key elements. But they had better act quickly. Millions of Americans already are enjoying tangible benefits from the health-care law, and they're not likely to look kindly on having those benefits weakened, much less revoked. The list of benefits so far includes: required coverage of preventive services such as childhood immunizations and cancer screenings for women; a ban on denying coverage for youngsters with preexisting medical conditions; letting young adults still at home remain on their parents' health plan; barring insurers from setting lifetime limits on coverage; and a $250 rebate for seniors facing the Medicare "doughnut hole" in drug coverage.

No pain, no gain. That's the essence of Bill Clinton's argument for his economic plan. You will be hit with higher taxes and may lose government benefits, but in return you will get a healthier economy and a smaller deficit. Well, not exactly. The pain is guaranteed, if the program passes Congress. But there's not likely to be any lasting gain unless further tough steps are taken. Even if Clinton's entire package of tax increases and spending cuts is enacted, economic growth is expected to be sluggish over the next five years.

JENICE Armstrong is the reason I still buy the paper edition of the Daily News. Her columns are engaging, and she never shies from a controversial topic - this time Tiger Woods. Sure, Woods is a well-known celebrity and has made himself fair game for the media. His legal expectations of privacy are reduced, and he has gone to painstaking efforts to protect the little privacy he and his family have. While acknowledging that Woods committed no crime and has the right to remain silent, Armstrong claims it's "not a good move.

George Ballard, a 27-year-old pipefitter, had read that Tom Brokaw and "NBC Nightly News" would be broadcasting from Temple University Hospital last night so he came out from his home just around the corner from the North Philadelphia hospital. He thought he might get a chance to voice his opinion about health-care reform to a national TV audience. But Ballard, who has health benefits through his job at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, was kept beyond yellow police lines away from the plastic tent where Brokaw stood on a platform in front of the hospital's Rock Pavilion, at Broad and Ontario streets.

Even before President Clinton could savor his House victory on the North American Free Trade Agreement yesterday, he was buffeted by a gale of bitterness from disaffected former allies in organized labor. Displaying an array of political skills, Clinton pushed NAFTA uphill for two months before winning a 234-200 triumph in the House on Wednesday night - and along the way overwhelmed fervent opposition from labor unions, most liberal Democrats and Ross Perot's populists. The opponents spoke back angrily yesterday.

By Kathleen Sebelius This week marks the third anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For Pennsylvanians, that means a health-care system that is stronger than it was three years ago, and a future that looks even brighter. Pennsylvanians who have health insurance have benefited from market reforms and consumer protections under the law. Preventive services like mammograms and flu shots are newly accessible to 3.2 million people with private plans. More than 220,000 of the state's Medicare beneficiaries have saved an average of $753 on their medications.

Even after President Obama's reelection eliminated the possibility of repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the state health insurance exchanges at its core remain embedded in uncertainty. The administration on Friday extended a deadline from this coming Friday to Dec. 14 for states to submit a blueprint for how they will set up an insurance exchange, as opposed to accepting one designed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. States still must notify regulators by Friday of their intention to set up their own exchanges.

With the economy still struggling, it's tough to predict how big a role the new health-care law will play this November. But now that the Supreme Court has spoken, this much is clear: This election should matter deeply to anyone who embraces the goal of expanding access to health care, as well as to anyone who thinks it's a misplaced priority. Beyond the spin and confusion, that's what this is about. For all its shortcomings, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — the 2010 law that nearly everybody calls Obamacare — represents the largest stride ever toward universal coverage, a goal of Democrats for more than half a century that has already been achieved by every other industrialized nation.

Conservatives fought Social Security, Medicare and the weekend when they were proposed. But once enacted, Republican and Democratic Presidents embraced all three as they became part of American life. We can expect President Obama's court-tested health-care reforms — which shift payment for uninsured people's health care from hospitals to taxpayers — will also go on, even if Republican Mitt Romney is elected President. Veteran Philadelphia investor James M. Meyer, of Tower Bridge Advisors, which manages $1 billion in other people's money, wrote a thoughtful account of the costs, purpose and likely durability of "Obamacare," in a note for clients of the West Conshohocken-based investment brokerage Boenning & Scattergood: "Republicans want to repeal the law. Indeed, the House will vote on or about July 11 to try and do just that.

Judging from opinion polls, millions of Americans must be eager for a showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court over the key, but unpopular, provision of the landmark health-care reform law that calls for a special tax penalty on anyone who doesn't have health insurance. Yet, this could turn out to be one of those situations where one has to be careful with one's wishes. The law's critics could come to regret it if the court's decision last week to review the issue leads to its reversal of other provisions of health-care reform that are not only widely popular, but needed.

HARRISBURG - Six months after the federal health-care bill became law, Democrat Dan Onorato is contending that his Republican opponent for governor is waffling on his position on the issue. Onorato noted Wednesday that Attorney General Tom Corbett, the GOP's gubernatorial nominee, in March joined a group of mostly Republican attorneys general around the country in filing suit to block the law on constitutional grounds. And in a letter to potential donors that month, Corbett wrote that "under no circumstances" would he go along with this "big-government, special-interest takeover of our health care.

Toward the end of the health-care battle, a beleaguered Obama staff member sent me an e-mail that ended with the words: "Sisyphus was a sissy compared to what we've been through!" Yes, the fight for health care seemed very much like the Greek myth of Sisyphus: Every time the White House found itself on the verge of rolling the health-care stone up the hill, some event - say, Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts - would force it to start over with a new strategy. Alas, for President Obama, this will not be the last moment that invites comparisons with Sisyphus.