Iowa Winners on Health Care
Only time will tell whether wins in the Iowa caucus and straw vote will translate into sustainable momentum for Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee. After all, attention has already shifted toward next Tuesday's New Hampshire primary and its impact on the candidates' chances of securing their respective party's nomination.
With this brief pause in the race, let's take a moment to summarize each candidate's stand on health care issues.
Obama -- Proposes universal health care coverage backed by employer mandates and mandates for children's health care. He said during the debate among Democratic candidates in June 2007 that his universal plan would cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 per year.
On his official Web site, Obama offers the following on lowering costs through investment in electronic health IT systems:
"Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes it hard to coordinate care, measure quality or reduce medical errors and which costs twice as much as electronic claims. [I] will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records, and will phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT. [I] will ensure that patients' privacy is protected.
Huckabee -- The former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister was not even considered among the top seven candidates from both parties in an analysis conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute in November 2007. How did he come out of nowhere to win the votes of Iowans?
"As when Pat Robertson made a surprise second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses in 1988, Mr. Huckabee enjoyed substantial political support from evangelical Christians and took advantage of a muddled Republican presidential field to gain his 11th-hour victory," reported Patrick Healy in the New York Times.
Huckabee differs from Obama on universal health care, stating that the U.S. does not need the governmental controls that would come with a universal care plan.
On his official Web site, Huckabee offers the following explanation of how his health care policy would work:
"We can make health care more affordable by reforming medical liability; adopting electronic record keeping; making health insurance more portable from one job to another; expanding health savings accounts to everyone, not just those with high deductibles; and making health insurance tax deductible for individuals and families as it now is for businesses. Low income families would get tax credits instead of deductions."