The White House
January 20, 2004
State of the Union Address
President George W. Bush
On the critical issue of health care, our goal is to ensure that Americans can choose and afford private health care coverage that best fits their individual needs. To make insurance more affordable, Congress must act to address rapidly rising health care costs. Small businesses should be able to band together and negotiate for lower insurance rates, so they can cover more workers with health insurance. I urge you to pass association health plans. (Applause.) I ask you to give lower-income Americans a refundable tax credit that would allow millions to buy their own basic health insurance. (Applause.)
By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs, and improve care. To protect the doctor-patient relationship, and keep good doctors doing good work, we must eliminate wasteful and frivolous medical lawsuits. (Applause.) And tonight I propose that individuals who buy catastrophic health care coverage, as part of our new health savings accounts, be allowed to deduct 100 percent of the premiums from their taxes. (Applause.)
A government-run health care system is the wrong prescription.(Applause.) By keeping costs under control, expanding access, and helping more Americans afford coverage, we will preserve the system of private medicine that makes America’s health care the best in the world. (Applause.)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html
Comment: Other than his comments on the recently enacted Medicare bill, the above is the entire section of his speech that covered his health care proposals.
President Bush’s proposals:
* “…ensure that Americans can choose and afford private health care coverage that best fits their individual needs…”
(Affordable coverage means plans stripped of benefits with excessive cost sharing)
* “…Congress must act to address rapidly rising health care costs.”
(Rhetoric without a substantive proposal)
* “Small businesses should be able to band together… (in) association health plans.”
(Association health plans enable the marketing of inadequate plans that escape adequate state insurance regulatory oversight)
* “… give lower-income Americans a refundable tax credit that would allow millions to buy their own basic health insurance.”
(Privatizing Medicaid while increasing the cost sharing of lower-income individuals!)
* “… computerizing health records…”
(An essential inevitability, made less possible by the perpetuation of our current fragmented method of funding health care)
* “… eliminate wasteful and frivolous medical lawsuits.”
(Malpractice reform is important, but “frivolous” lawsuits are hardly even a negligible portion of the health care cost problem)
* “… individuals who buy catastrophic health care coverage, as part of our new health savings accounts, be allowed to deduct 100 percent of the premiums from their taxes.”
(Regressive tax policy that disproportionately benefits higher-income individuals)
By keeping costs under control, expanding access, and helping more Americans afford coverage, we will preserve the system of private medicine that makes America’s health care the best in the world. (Applause.)”
(Innumerable studies have confirmed that we rank first only in the cost of our health care system but that our system fails miserably in health care outcomes, especially considering our resources. America’s health care is clearly not the best in the world. Health policy experts across the political spectrum agree that we need a federal solution to our problems in funding health care. Our president, in condemning government involvement, is not demonstrating the political leadership that we desperately need.
Nor are the politicians who applauded these comments. Shouldn’t we be considering a regime change