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NEXTopia
Welcome to NEXTopia, a Web diary in which NEXT writers — and readers — share their evolving thoughts on a variety of issues. The opinions you read below are those of the individual writers, not necessarily those representing The Seattle Times.
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November 16, 2004
| Because he cares |
Speaking of seeing doctors, Bush is moving forward with his wonderful plans to fix the health insurance crisis. What are they? Well, basically:
- Put caps on malpractice lawsuits -- his number one priority. Of course, this is a really small part of medical costs. So why the priority? I'm sure it has nothing to do with favoring corporations and insurance companies over the patients. Nope.
- More tax breaks. Yea! Of course, a little tax break isn't likely to give most people enough to actually buy insurance. But hey, any excuse to further cut taxes on the wealthy -- oh, hey, and this time the rest of us too.
- Increase the role of private insurers in Medicare. You know, give them a bigger piece of the pie.
All of this money-juggling will make a lot of rich people richer, and powerful companies more able to do whatever they want, but what effect will this actually have on health insurance? Well, it will insure an additional 6 to 8 million people.
Of course, when you consider that 5 million people have lost insurance since Bush took office, well, that means Bush will break about even, maybe even insure a couple million extra people.
Unfortunately, that still leaves about 38 million Americans uninsured. And with all these tax breaks and spending on things like war, and, um, more tax breaks, Bush may have to cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits if he wants to reduce the deficit to a mere, paltry, silly little $260 billion.
But hey, can't have everything, right?
Respond to Randy |
| Posted by Randy Henderson at November 16, 2004 02:48 PM |
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