The Need for Sensible Health Care Solutions
September 18 , 2007
Contact: Lisa Bell
703-470-5042
vern@mckinleyforcongress.com
Ashburn, VA—Approximately 47 million people are uninsured in the United States. Most people that do have health insurance are dependent on their current employer for coverage. They are “job-locked” if they are afraid to change or lose their job because they might not be able to buy insurance in the current market, either due to affordability or health issues. Being uninsured or job-locked can cause anxiety due to the insecurity of what the future might hold if a health problem, job change or job loss is confronted.
Historically, Democrats have leveraged these fears to try to implement big government solutions to perceived health care problems that they argue are caused by imperfections in the private market for insurance and health care. For at least the past decade, when pollsters have asked respondents which political party would improve health care, Democrats are heavily favored, generally by margins of 60 to 20 percent (CBS News/New York Times Poll). The question is whether this is because they have better solutions or because they are better at stirring up health care-related fears.
One example of playing to people’s fears was the recent debate over the State Children's Health Insurance Program or SCHIP. Democrats painted their efforts to dramatically explode the budget for this program as a means to increase the coverage of at-risk, low income children. In reality, Democrats were largely trying to expand coverage beyond the targeted group in an effort to simultaneously, as the Wall Street Journal rightly put it, create a new middle class entitlement and undermine the private insurance market. President Bush made the latter point clear when he noted that “My concern is that when you expand eligibility…you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.”
“The reality is that rather than flaws in the private markets the underlying cause of people’s anxiety is often current government policy,” notes Vern McKinley, who is the Republican challenger to incumbent GOP Congressman Frank Wolf in the 10th District of Virginia. “In the case of job-lock, a major reason for this phenomenon is the unequal tax code treatment for health insurance coverage purchased as an individual as opposed to through an employer. Proposals like the ones set forth by the Giuliani campaign attempt to level the playing field in the tax code while increasing accessibility, portability and stability. Additional proposals the campaign has made to allow purchasing coverage through interstate markets would also avoid artificial and damaging state government mandates,” McKinley concluded.
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