Health Care ’08: How Do the Candidates Compare?

The presidential candidates may be able to dodge some issues in the November 2008 election, but health care is not one of them. According to a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, health care is the number one domestic issue among voters, and it is no surprise.

By all accounts, ours is a system marked by inefficiency, high costs, and inequity.

We spend over $2 trillion a year on health care—twice as much as any other nation—but have a shorter life expectancy and higher infant mortality rate than any industrialized country. We have a record number of uninsured—forty-five million—and many people with coverage still cannot afford it. Medical bills are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States.

A lot of money is spent, but not necessarily in the right places. One in three health care dollars goes to administrative costs, a byproduct of having multiple private insurance companies that spend millions on medical underwriting, marketing, and customer claim disputes. Chronic, preventable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure account for 75 percent of our health care expenditures, yet we spend less than five cents per health care dollar on prevention and public health.

Continuing with our current trajectory is both economically and socially unsustainable. Things needs to change, but just how do the candidates plan on changing them?

Democrats

Although many Americans may be clamoring for a single payer system—as popularized by the movie Sicko—none of the Democratic candidates are proposing one outright. Suggesting we overhaul to a government run system, like Canada’s or the UK’s, could be political suicide—too reminiscent of the Clintons’ 1994 health care initiative, which was attacked from all sides.

The Democrats do see the government playing a larger role in ensuring every American gets affordable health coverage, but all three front-runners—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards—propose a mix of private and public entities.

Both Edwards and Obama would expand on existing programs to increase insurance coverage. This includes incentivizing employer-based health care through tax cuts for businesses and increasing eligibility for Medicare and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).