Greenbeard
Gold Member
Last week Kaiser Health News launched a feature consolidating some of the health care positions of the leading presidential candidates: "GOP Presidential Hopefuls: Where They Stand On Health Care." They're sorted by issue--apparently with more to be added in the future--and right now those issues are Medicare & Aging, Marketplace, Health Reform Philosophy, and Medicaid.
Handy resource.
On a related note, the NYT had an article yesterday examining the records of Romney, Perry, and Huntsman on health care, mostly on coverage.
Romney:
Huntsman:
Perry:
The declared candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have already been campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. They've held several debates and competed in the Iowa straw poll. But they're still developing their platform positions and honing their stump speeches.
KHN has assembled this chart to show where five of the candidates currently stand on major health care issues. The candidates are Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, former Utah Gov. John Huntsman, Rep. Ron Paul and Gov. Rick Perry, both from Texas and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney. We will be adding issues - and candidates - in the days ahead.
Handy resource.
On a related note, the NYT had an article yesterday examining the records of Romney, Perry, and Huntsman on health care, mostly on coverage.
Romney:
For the 10 percent of residents who had been uninsured, the commonwealth’s coverage mandate, coupled with government subsidies for the poor, has proved a striking success. A study last year concluded that 98.1 percent of residents, and 99.8 percent of children, had health insurance, leading the country. The state also found, to the surprise of some, that the share of employers contributing to their workers’ coverage (rather than accepting a modest penalty for not doing so) had risen.
Huntsman:
In 2007, he hired John T. Nielsen, a former hospital system lawyer, to investigate whether “we could replicate what Massachusetts had done,” Mr. Nielsen said. He also lent his aides to a high-powered working group convened by the United Way of Salt Lake that ultimately devised a plan that relied on an exchange and an individual mandate.
In at least two interviews that year, Mr. Huntsman described a mandate as necessary to achieving the kind of expansion he envisioned. “I think if you’re going to get it done and get it done right, mandate has to be part of it in some way, shape or form,” Mr. Huntsman told the public television station KUED.
But the governor’s top health advisers, including Mr. Nielsen and Dr. David N. Sundwall, his health commissioner, said Mr. Huntsman never expressed a preference for the mandate in their discussions. And once Greg Curtis, the House speaker at the time, informed Huntsman aides that the mandate would be a nonstarter in the Republican-controlled Legislature, Mr. Huntsman did not push back.
“He’s a pragmatic politician,” Mr. Sundwall said. “He said, ‘Then let’s go with what we can get.’ ”
The resulting package, enacted in 2008, featured a scaled-down exchange, available only to small businesses. It has attracted 165 employers covering 4,206 workers and dependents, one-fiftieth the number in the Massachusetts exchange.
Perry:
Mr. Perry, by contrast, eschewed direct efforts to expand coverage in Texas and cemented its status as the state with the highest rate of people without insurance.
When Mr. Perry succeeded George W. Bush in December 2000, about 22 percent of Texans had no insurance, second only to New Mexico. After Mr. Perry’s decade in office, Texas now claims the highest uninsured rate, at 26 percent, as well as other distinctions like the lowest rate of prenatal care.