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Study: Some healthcare reform bills are better than others

January 12, 2009 — 10:38am ET | By Anne Zieger
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Congress got a little excited at the end of their last session, and introduced almost a dozen bills intended to shrink the number of uninsured patients in the U.S. And while no one bill is likely to completely eliminate the uninsured, certain ones are likely to get closer.

So the Lewin Group did a study, sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund, to try to determine which bills would get the closest to insuring all uninsured Americans. The result? Two bills, one from Pete Stark (D-CA) and another from John Dingell (D-MI) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) would do the trick. Stark's bill aims to ensure coverage for all children, while the Dingell-Kennedy bill attempts to create a "Medicare for all" system.

Which is not to say that researchers consider the other bills to be completely ineffective. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a Health Americans Act and Max Baucus (D-MT) released a legislative reform package, and the study finds that both of these would make a significant dent in the number of uninsured Americans.

The estimated population in the U.S. in 2010 is 306.9 million, while the estimated uninsured if no bills are passed is 48.9 million.

To learn more about the study:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)

Related Article:
Americans see need for immediate healthcare reform

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By Richard A. Damon, MD | Posted 3:32pm | January 13, 2009

It will be impossible to solve the vast socio-economic issues without complete overhaul of the tax system to accommodate costs, but also to remedy the loop holes, the corruption and greedy orientation of the major financial forces at work in a market driven economy operating freely without strict regulatory oversight. As Forbes and hckaby previously advocated, a consumer based tax system should be critically examined in a dedicated bipartisan way, without special interest financial influences. An equitable base of taxation for all levels of income with additional consumer taxes applied to the optional , unnecessary goods and services the higher income people desire. A national one payer health care system covering all citizens, accounting for regulatory mechanisms for quality of services/outcomes,regulatated profitability from drugs and providers of care, with emphysis on prevention and increased training of numbers of primary care givers is the crux of a system that would work.

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