text: BUSH'S INADEQUATE HEALTH CARE REFORM SIDES WITH PROFITEERS, NOT THE PUBLIC - Sun Sentinel
  BUSH'S INADEQUATE HEALTH CARE REFORM SIDES WITH PROFITEERS, NOT THE PUBLIC
  Ordinary aspirin seems to prevent colon cancer and may help to treat AIDS. But pharmaceutical makers won't invest in massive research to see what aspirin can do besides ease headaches and reduce fever.
  If nothing else, this little factoid tells you what is wrong with the Bush administration's ideological, free-market approach to national medical care: In the case of medical care in America, the free market has failed disastrously. It has produced the most costly, inefficient, inequitable distribution of health care in what we laughingly call the civilized world.
  Even many House Republicans, perhaps the most market-oriented group on Earth, agree. "The current (health-care) system is unacceptably flawed," says a report by Rep. Bill Gradison, R-Ohio.
  President Bush's response: utter confusion. The White House stopped the presses on its annual budget message this week when Gradison, a moderate who enjoys wide respect, led a revolt against Bush's proposed patchwork solution to the national health-care crisis.
  No, this tax wouldn't have raised any meaningful amount for the Treasury. The idea was that rather than pay the tax, employees would shop around in the free market for cheaper policies.
  Among Gradison's objections: Bush, without consulting anyone, was embarking on the same kind of disastrous tax increase that led to a senior citizens' revolt against mandatory catastrophic health insurance. The White House stopped in mid-course to rethink its strategy. After all, this is an election year.
  There is a more basic objection to Bush's approach: He is trying to solve a major national problem -- one that accounts for 13 percent of our gross national product -- by fiddling around with the tax code, rather than by seeking a fundamental reform.
  Proof that the tax route is ineffective: The IRS has already eliminated the tax deduction for most health care by disallowing all expenses below 7-1/2 percent of your income. Theoretically, if you can't deduct the cost of health care, you should spend less for it, and that should hold down medical spending. In fact, medical costs have risen at a steady 10 percent or more every year this decade. The tax change had zero impact.
  "None of Bush's proposals do anything to hold down medical costs," says a congressional expert. "He does nothing to eliminate the administrative costs of private health care, and that's estimated to be $67 billion a year spent on billing, marketing, advertising, paper-shuffling and waste. When he proposes tax credits, he's asking other taxpayers to subsidize $67 billion in insurance company waste."
  "Families' costs for health care are also the income and profits of the medical industry -- the insurance companies, for-profit hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and doctors. It is a zero-sum game. The president will have to choose whether he is more inclined to protect the income and profits of the medical industry or whether he is more inclined to protect families' costs."