ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 18, 1996 TAG: 9611180117
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
WITH MANAGED care driving down health-care costs, including spending on Medicaid, the nation can afford to extend insurance coverage to more of the nation's have-nots.
Despite piecemeal health-insurance reform, more children, rather than fewer, have been uninsured in recent years. Studies show that, even as medical costs are being tamed from the average 20 percent increases that battered employers annually in the 1980s, the proportion of children covered by private insurance has fallen.
What was a national disgrace in the '80s has become a greater one.
The health-care savings realized by managed care are not limited to the private sector. The growth of Medicaid costs has dropped from 17 percent a year in the first half of the decade to a surprisingly low 3 percent in the past fiscal year. The Congressional Budget Office had predicted a 10 percent rate of growth through 2002.
The lower rate of growth, given the aging of the Baby Boomer population, is not sustainable without major reforms in entitlement programs. But the current low inflation, in a $90 billion program, frees a big amount of budgeted money.
In 1994, the General Accounting Office reported recently, 14.2 percent, or 10 million, of the nation's children were uninsured - the highest percentage since 1987. There's no question where the health-care savings should be spent.
LENGTH: Short : 34 linesby CNB