News Tip: State of U.S. Economy Could Determine Whether President Tackles Health Coverage for Uninsured
Providing universal access to health care will nonetheless remain a top issue in 2004 elections, says Chris Conover, a health policy expert
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
How President Bush tries to address the issue of uninsured Americans could boil down to how the economy is faring prior to the 2004 presidential election, says a Duke University health policy expert.
A Congressional Budget Report released this week says nearly 60 million Americans lacked insurance at some point in 1998, the most recent year for which reliable figures were available. The report also suggests that the number of people uninsured for the entire year was 21 to 31 million (9 to 13 percent of nonelderly Americans.)
Christopher Conover, an assistant research professor at Duke's Center for Health Policy, Law and Management, says if the United States "wants to seriously dent the problem, there's no real way to avoid mandating coverage, either by forcing employers to provide, as (Democratic presidential candidate Dick) Gephardt has proposed; by adopting a Canadian-style single payer system, such as the one just proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich; or by mandating individual coverage which is what more conservative advocacy groups, such as American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation, have suggested.
"Each of these approaches has strengths and weaknesses. Were there a 'silver bullet' we might have done this a long time ago. The political problem that even a gifted politician such as Bill Clinton was unable to surmount was that both Congress and the general public typically are split roughly evenly among these different approaches, so we've never gotten a consensus on which one to even try."
Conover, who teaches a class at Duke on health politics in the U.S., says he is not surprised that there is now renewed interest in this issue given the state of the domestic economy, and he expects there will be a fierce debate over this topic during the 2004 presidential election. "Whether Bush is able and willing to do this depends a lot on the economy in summer 2004. He doesn't 'need' this issue to win the Republican nomination, but he probably can't entirely duck the issue and still get elected in November. What is politically feasible at that point will depend heavily on the economy and budget picture."
Conover can be reached for additional comment at (919) 684-8026, or by email at conoverc@hpolicy.duke.edu.
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