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Bush Targets Malpractice, Insurance Concerns
Feb. 3, 2005 -- In his State of the Union address, President Bush called on Congress to pass a "comprehensive" health care, including caps on malpractice awards against doctors and legal changes allowing small businesses or individuals to band together to buy insurance.
The president also voiced his continued support for tax credits to help lower-income families buy increasingly more expensive medical coverage. Many Democrats support the credits, though disagreements over their size and structure and whether or not to pair them with expansions in public health programs prevented them from passing during Bush's first term.
His remarks come as health care costs continue to exert increasing pressure both on the national economy and on family budgets. National health spending reached $1.7 trillion in 2003, topping 15% of the gross domestic product for the first time in the nation's history, according to recent figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
"To make our economy stronger and more productive, we must make health care more affordable, and give families greater access to good coverage and more control over their health decisions," Bush said to enthusiastic applause.
Bush did not specifically mention the steadily rising number of Americans without health insurance, now numbering approximately 45 million. But he repeated calls for expanded use of tax-exempt health savings accounts and more funding for building community health centers in poor rural counties; two policies that he has long backed as ways to spread health care to more people.
Democrats criticized Bush for failing to control health care costs, which have gone up an average of 9% nationally since he took office in 2001. Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums for the average family of four now exceed $9,000, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
"Health care costs have shot up double digits year after year of the Bush administration," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said in a televised response aired after Bush's speech.
Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) backed Bush's call for increased use of health savings accounts, saying they promote restraint by shifting some health costs from the government or employers to individuals. "One way to get costs down is to get people to use their health dollars more wisely," Johnson, who chairs the House Ways and Means health subcommittee, tells WebMD.
Medicaid Looming
The president did not directly mention Medicaid in his remarks on domestic policy, which instead largely focused his proposal to partially privatize Social Security. Still, Medicaid, the publicly funded insurance program for low-income people, remains a looming and potentially highly controversial part of the coming health agenda in Washington.
Bush administration officials have already left some lawmakers grumbling over reports of likely proposed cuts to Medicaid, which now serves close to 48 million Americans. The soon-to-be-released White House budget is likely to target the program, projected to grow 7% per year for the next decade, for cuts in an effort to ease budget deficits.
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