A conservative case for universal access to health care

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 36, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 36-45

  Menzel, Paul ^a   Light, Donald W ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748500829     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hcr.2006.0063     Document Type: Review

References (64)

1. To say that political conservatives share these values is not to say the values are uniquely conservative. While conservatives tend to emphasize them, most are widely shared by others across the political spectrum. Thus, the "conservative case" this paper lays out is undoubtedly widely shared. The point is that conservatives should embrace and articulate it on the basis of moral principles and values that are theirs, too.
2. O. Carrasquillo et al., "A Reappraisal of Private Employers' Role in Providing Health Insurance," New England Journal of Medicine 340 (1999): 109-114;
3. J.C. Robinson, "Consolidation and the Transformation of Competition in Health Insurance," Health Affairs 23, no. 6 (2004): 11-24;
4. M.S. Marquis and S.H. Long, "To Offer or Not to Offer: The Role of Price in Emmployers' Health Insurance Decisions," Health Services Research 36 (2001): 937-58;
5. Working for Health Coalition in Washington State, "Risky Business: Working People Losing Health Coverage" (a report), June 2004, at http://workingforhealth.org.
6. N. Owcharenko, "Health Care Tax Credits: Designing an Alternative to Employer-Based Coverage," Backgrounder No. 1895, Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, November 8, 2005, at www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/ bg18 95.cfm;
7. R.E. Moffit and N. Owcharenko, "Covering the Uninsured: How States Can Expand and Improve Health Coverage," Backgrounder No. 1637, Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, March 14, 2003, at www.heritage.org/research/ healthcare/bg1637.cfm;
8. Health Policy Consensus Group, "Vision Statement: A Vision for Consumer-Driven Health Care Reform," Alexandria, Va.: The Galen Institute, 1999, at www.galen.org/vision.asp.
9. Health Policy Consensus Group, "Vision Statement"; Owcharenko, "Health Care Tax Credits";
10. E.F. Haislmaier, R. E. Moffit, and N. Owcharenko, "A Good Start: The House Health Care Reform Bills," WebMemo No. 803, Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, July 22, 2005, at www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/ wm803.cfm.
11. S.M. Butler, "A Framework for Reform," in S.M. Butler and E.F. Haislmeier, A National Health System for America (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 1989), 35-53;
12. M. Pauly et al., Responsible National Health Insurance (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1992).
13. P. Krugman, "Ailing Health Care," New York Times (April 11, 2005);
14. G.F. Anderson et al., "Its the Prices, Stupid: Why the United States Is So Different from Other Countries," Health Affairs 22, no. 3 (2003): 89-105.
15. E. O'Brien, "Employers' Benefits from Workers' Health Insurance," Milbank Quarterly 81, no. 1 (2003): 5-44.
16. D. W. Light, "Ironies of Success-A New History of the American Health Care 'System,'" Journal of Health and Social Behavior 45 (2005, extra issue): 1-24;
17. D. W. Light, "The Practice and Ethics of Risk-Rated Health Insurance," Journal of the American Medical Association 267 (1992): 2503-2508;
18. Institute of Medicine, Hidden Costs, Value Lost: Uninsurance in America (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2003).
19. The Blackwell Dictionary of Political Science: A User's Guide to Its Terms (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 81.
20. L.T. Sargent, Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis, twelfth edition (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 2003), 104.
21. J.Z. Muller, "Introduction: What Is Conservative Social and Political Thought?" in Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present, ed. J.Z. Muller (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 4-8.
22. Carrasquillo et al., "A Reappraisal of Private Employers' Role in Providing Health Insurance."
23. Sargent, Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis, 104.
24. S. Gottleib, "Medical Bills Account for Forty Percent of Bankruptcies," British Medical Journal 320 (2000): 1295.
25. G. Shearer, Hidden from View: The Growing Burden of Health Care Costs (Washington, D.C.: Consumers Union, 2000).
26. J. Hadley and J. Holahan, "How Much Medical Care Do the Uninsured Use, and Who Pays For It?" Health Affairs 22 (February 12, 2003), Web exclusive, at www.healthaffairs.org/WebExclusives/Hadley_Web_Excl_021203.htm.
27. Families USA (K. Stoll, author, with data analysis by K. Thorpe), Paying a Premium: The Added Cost of Care for the Uninsured (New York: Families USA, 2005), available at http://www.familiesusa.org/site/PageServer?pagename= Paying_a_Premium (accessed June 22, 2005).
28. J. Banja, "The Improbable Future of Employment-Based Insurance," Hastings Center Report 30, no. 3 (2000): 17-25.
29. Anderson et al., "It's the Prices, Stupid," and Robinson et al., "Consolidation and the Transformation of Competition in Health Insurance"; U. Reinhardt, "Is There Hope for the Uninsured?" Health Affairs 22 (August 27, 2003), Web exclusive, available at www.healthaffairs.org/WebExclusives/Reinhardt_Web_Excl_082703.htm.
30. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (1998). Pub. L. No. 99-272, 100 Stat. 164 (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. 1395dd).
31. M. Freudenheim, "Sixty Companies Plan to Sponsor Health Coverage for Uninsured," New York Times (January 27, 2005).
32. Ibid.
33. R. Kirk, "Prescription, Authority, and Ordered Freedom," What Is Conservatism? ed. F.S. Meyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), 24.
34. Shearer, Hidden from View.
35. J. Miller and M. Miller, "Singled Out: A Warning to the Self-Employed" New York Times Magazine (April 18, 2004), 48-51.
36. Light, "The Practice and Ethics of Risk-Rated Health Insurance."
37. D. W. Light, "Life, Death, and the Insurance Companies," New England Journal of Medicine 330 (1994): 498-500;
38. S.D. Boren, "I Had a Tough Day Today, Hillary," New England Journal of Medicine 330 (1994): 500-502.
39. D.E. Grenbowski, R. Diehr, and L.C. Novak, "Measuring the 'Managedness' and Covered Benefits of Health Plans," Health Services Research 35 (2000): 707-734.
40. S. Woolhandler, D.U. Himmelstein, and T. Campbell, "Costs of Health Care Administration in the United States and Canada," New England Journal of Medicine 349 (2003): 768-75.
41. S. Woolhandler and D.U. Himmelstein, "The Deteriorating Administrative Efficiency of the U.S. Health Care System," New England Journal of Medicine 324 (1991): 1253-58
42. (see also correspondence, New England Journal of Medicine 331 [1994]: 336);
43. S. Woolhandler and D.U. Himmelstein, "Costs of Care and Administration at For-Profit and Other Hospitals in the United States," New England Journal of Medicine 336 (1997): 769-74
44. (see also correspondence, New England Journal of Medicine 337 [1997]: 1779-80).
45. Anderson et al., "It's the Prices, Stupid."
46. Banja, "The Improbable Future of Employment-Based Insurance."
47. Business Perspectives on the Uninsured (Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Business Group on Health, 2001).
48. Anderson et al., "It's the Prices, Stupid."
49. Moffit and Owcharenko, "Covering the Uninsured: How States Can Expand and Improve Health Coverage."
50. Krugman, "Ailing Health Care," and Light, "The Practice and Ethics of Risk-Rated Health Insurance."
51. N. Daniels and J. Sabin, Setting Limits Fairly: Can We Learn to Share Medical Resources? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
52. P. Menzel, Strong Medicine: The Ethical Rationing of Health Care (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);
53. M. Hall, Making Medical Spending Decisions: The Law, Ethics, and Economics of Rationing Mechanisms (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
54. J. Sheils and R. Haught, "The Cost of Tax-Exempt Health Benefits in 2004," Health Affairs (February 25, 2004), Web exclusive, at http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.w4.106v1. The full volume of federal and state tax breaks for health insurance in 2004 was $210 billion.
55. Academic conservatives, to be sure, have been largely consistent in opposing the current unlimited taxable income exclusion for employment-located insurance premiums and urging its replacement with a uniform-dollar-amount tax credit for all persons independent of employment. See Owcharenko, "Health Care Tax Credits: Designing an Alternative to Employer-Based Coverage."
56. Reinhardt, "Is There Hope for the Uninsured?"
57. M. Miller, "Socialized Medicine? From Republicans?" Fortune 151, no. 9 (May 2, 2005): 48.
58. See also J. Lewin and R.A. Williams, "Cover Yourself!" Wall Street Journal (August 19, 2005). Dr. Lewin is CEO of the California Medical Association, and Mr. Williams is president of Aetna.
59. D. Leonhardt, "A Health Fix That Is Not a Fantasy," New York Times (April 12, 2006).
60. P. Belluck, "Massachusetts Sets Health Plan for Nearly All," New York Times (April 5, 2006).
61. Ibid.
62. See, for example, Menzel, Strong Medicine, 116-131.
63. For a splendid example of such possibilities, see M. Miller, "Health Care: A Bolt of Civic Hope," The Atlantic Monthly, October 2000: 77-87, a reconstructed extensive interview with liberal U.S. Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat from Washington, and conservative U.S. Representative Jim McCrery, Republican from Louisiana.
64. N. Daniels, D.W. Light, and R. Carson, Benchmarks of Fairness for Health Care Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).