ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 5, 1996 TAG: 9603050029
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
HARRY and Louise must have been right. There couldn't have been a health-care crisis in 1993, when pundits and politicians jabbered about it constantly. Thank goodness the health-insurance industry commissioned Harry and Louise to go on television and scare the bejabbers out of the American public, thereby - along with the Clintons' incredible blundering - helping to kill health-care reform. Otherwise, Congress might have done something.
If there were, after all, a problem - indeed, if there is a problem now - wouldn't our leaders and wanna-be leaders - Clinton, Dole, Buchanan, Forbes, Alexander, et al. - be talking about it? Since none of them even lip-syncs ``health-care crisis,'' what's to worry?
Well, for starters, millions of working Americans and their children still have no medical insurance.
As one result, many delay getting care until they finally have to go to an emergency room for treatment. Then, they may be forced into bankruptcy because they can't pay medical bills that might have been less daunting had they received earlier or preventive care.
All the while, they may have become less productive on the job because of poor health. All the while, hospitals and doctors have passed on their losses to other health-care consumers in the form of higher costs and higher insurance premiums.
And, in addition to those lacking health insurance, countless other middle-class Americans risk losing their insurance if they face catastrophic bills for catastrophic illness based on what insurers deem ``pre-existing conditions.'' Millions more risk losing their health coverage if they change jobs.
In this latter category are many who are locked into low-wage, dead-end employment. Because their health insurance lacks mobility, they dare not contemplate upward mobility with another employer. Neither market forces, the fictional Harry and Louise to the contrary, nor advances in otherwise mostly successful managed care have yet to alleviate this health-care crisis for many workers and families. Hindrances to labor mobility aren't helping a rapidly changing economy, either.
In the '93 health-care debate, even staunch foes of the Clintons' over-complicated, over-intrusive health-care package agreed something needed to be done to address the issues of pre-existing conditions and ``portability'' of insurance for workers who switch jobs. Bipartisan legislation to do just that was introduced by Sens. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., but it is still pending.
The Kassebaum-Kennedy bill isn't the sweeping reform that the Clintons wanted. It's a modest, incremental change, the need for which is recognized by nearly everyone except the health-insurance industry. Among other things, it would encourage insurers to compete on the basis of price and service, rather than by excluding all but the healthiest populations. Two recent, independent studies discredit industry claims that it would cause a huge increase in health-insurance premiums.
Why is this legislation still pending after three years, when it is needed to address a serious problem for many American workers and their families? Call it a congressional-dithering crisis, prolonged by the insurance industry's clout on Capitol Hill and its generosity with campaign contributions.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB