Sub-sections under Health Care:
• Insurance coverage
• Medicare & Medicaid
• Patient Rights
• Other issues under Health Care

Gore a hop, skip, & jump away from Hillary-care

Claims that he supported patient rights in Texas is false

In 1995 Bush vetoed a patient’s bill of rights, one that contained many of the provisions that he praised last night: report cards on health maintenance organizations, liberal emergency room access, and the elimination of a gag clause forbidding doctors from telling patients about more costly treatment options than HMO coverage.

At the time, Bush said these provisions would be too costly to business. Bush did sign some of the provisions into law two years later. But he opposed the right to sue HMOs in court, a right last night he termed “interesting.” But a bipartisan, veto-proof majority in the Texas Legislature supported the right to sue. Bush let the provision go into law without his signature.

Absolutely opposed to a national health care plan

BUSH: I’m absolutely opposed to a national health care plan. I don’t want the federal government making decisions for consumers or for providers. I remember what the administration tried to do in 1993. They tried to have a national health care plan, and fortunately it failed. I trust people; I don’t trust the federal government. I don’t want the federal government making decisions on behalf of everybody.

Give states money to help poor seniors buy medicine

BUSH: Step one is to reform the Medicare system. I want to call upon Republicans and Democrats to take care of a senior prescription drug program. I think it’s important to have what’s called Immediate Helping Hand, which is direct money to states so seniors don’t have to chose between food and medicine.

GORE: I have never been afraid to take on the big drug companies. They are now spending more money on advertising than they are on research. They’re trying to artificially extend the monopoly so they can keep charging high prices. I want to streamline the approval of generic drugs so that we bring the price down. I proposed a prescription drug benefit under Medicare. You pick your own doctor and the doctor chooses the prescription and nobody can overrule your doctor. You go to your own pharmacy and Medicare pays half. If you’re poor, they pay all of it. If you have extraordinarily high costs, then they pay all over $4,000 out of pocket.

Medical Savings Accounts part of affordable access & choice

A: I believe every American should have access to quality, affordable health care by giving consumers better information about health care plans, providing more choices such as medical savings accounts and changing tax laws to help more people, such as the uninsured and the self-employed, afford health insurance.“

Claims of immediate help are only true for poorer families

BUSH: I cannot let this go by. Under my plan, the man gets immediate help with prescription drugs.“

ANALYSIS: This is NOT TRUE. They would not get immediate help because their income exceeds 175% of the federal poverty level. They would get help only after their bills exceeded $6,000. But a poorer family would get immediate help.

Invest $27B in NIH to cure Alzheimer’s & other diseases

Blueprint: Senior choice; Rx benefit; tax breaks

The Bush plan will:
• Modernize Medicare.Give seniors a greater choice in plans with more options & access to the latest medical technology.
• Provide a prescription drug benefit now.Underwrite at least 25% of the cost of prescription drug premiums for all seniors.
• Provide catastrophic Medicare coverage. Ensure seniors suffering from life-threatening illnesses will never pay more than $6,000 annually for Medicare costs.
• Provide patients a bill of rights.Provide patient protections, like those in Texas, to ensure quality of care from health care providers.
• Provide access to health care for the uninsured and underserved.Refundable health credit of $2,000 to help purchase health insurance. Commit $3.6 billion over five years to build 1,200 new Community Health Centers.
• Support caregivers and long-term care. Additional exemption ($2,750 in 2000) for each elderly relative; plus 100% tax deduction for long-term care insurance premiums.

Government HMOs not the answer for Social Security

More funding for disability assistance

Our goal now is [to remove] the last barriers to full, independent, productive lives for every person, with or without disability. I support the Americans with Disabilities Act, [which bans] discrimination against a person with a disability. But the banning of discrimination is just the beginning of full participation. Barriers remain. My administration will act in three specific areas:
1. We will promote independent living [via] tripling the current funding, to $33 million annually, for research on assistive technology like text telephones for the deaf and computer monitors with braille display for the blind.
2. We will help citizens with disabilities to claim their rightful place in the workforce [via] $20 million to create an Access to Telecommuting Fund.
3. We will help Americans with disabilities to gain fuller access to community life [via] $10 million each year to aid religious and civic groups in making their facilities more accessible.

Family Health Credit: pay for 90% of basic low-income policy

$3.6B for 1,200 new community health centers

Expand and Reform Medical Savings Accounts:

The law and regulations governing MSAs should be changed to:
• Make MSAs permanent;
• Lift the 750,000 cap on the number of accounts;
• Allow all employers to offer an MSA, including as part of a cafeteria plan;
• Permit both employee and employer contributions; and
• Lower the minimum deductible to $1,000 for an individual and $2,000 for family coverage, and permit contributions up to the deductible.

Opposes doctor assisted suicide

Restrict teenage smoking by tough state & federal laws

Health insurance for kids from tobacco settlement

Ask “are we getting health care?” not “are we uninsured?”

We need a $2,000 credit, a rebate for working people who don’t have insurance, that they can use in the marketplace and start purchasing insurance. We need to allow small businesses to write insurance policies across jurisdictional lines so small business can afford health care. Health care needs to be affordable and available.

Link small businesses together in large insurance pools

BUSH: For working folks that want health care, that can’t afford it, a couple of things: I’ve put money in my budget to expand community health centers all around the country. These are places where people can get primary care. Secondly, you get a $2,000 rebate from the government if you’re a family making $30,000 or less - it scales down as it gets higher - that you can use to purchase health care in the private market. Allow business associations to write association plans across jurisdictional lines so that small businesses have got the capacity of national pooling to drive the cost of insurance down.

GORE: I’d like to see some form of universal health care, but I’m not for a government-run system. We should start by greatly expanding the so-called child health insurance, or CHIP program, to give health insurance to every single child in this country.

Texas spent $4.7B on uninsured & covered 110,000 kids

BUSH: We spent $4.7 billion a year on the uninsured in Texas. The percentage of uninsured in Texas has gone down, while the percentage of uninsured in America has gone up. Our CHIPS program got a late start because our government meets only four months out of every two years. It may come as a shock for somebody who’s been in Washington for so long, but limited government can work. In ‘99, we signed up over 110,000 children to the CHIPS program. For comparable states our size, we’re signing them up fast as any other state.

GORE: I’m no expert on Texas procedures, but friends there tell me that the governor opposed a measure put forward by Democrats in the legislature to expand the number of children that would be covered. And instead directed the money toward a tax cut, a significant part of which went to wealthy interests. He declared the need for a new tax cut for the oil companies in Texas an emergency need.

$4.7B for uninsured children in Texas; 1.4M still uninsured

BUSH: If he’s trying to allege that I’m a hard-hearted person and I don’t care about children, he’s absolutely wrong. We spent $4.7 billion a year in the State of Texas for uninsured people and they get health care. The facts are that we’re reducing the number of uninsured as a percentage of our population. And as a percentage of the population that’s increasing nationally.

Cover 3 million uninsured at a 10-year cost of $135 billion

Health care divides the candidates on the balance of power they propose between the public and private sectors. Gore served in the health-conscious Clinton administration; health is traditionally a Democratic issue. Bush has governed a state with one of the worst public-health records in the country. He says he would:
• introduce a wider set of tax credits (up to $2,000 for a family earning $30,000 a year) to help people buy their own health insurance. Estimated cost and coverage: 3 million more Americans insured, at a cost of $135 billion over ten years.
• spend $158 billion over ten years restructuring the administrative and delivery system of Medicare, relying on private health-care companies to compete in offering insurance covering the full range of existing Medicare services and a new prescription-drug benefit.
• support a patients’ bill of rights that would give patients in federally regulated health plans a limited right to sue. Texas passed such a law without Bush’s support.

Small business health insurance via trade associations

More CHIPs; more multistate HMOs

New Prosperity Initiative: $2,000 health ins. tax credit