Archive for March 10, 2009

Might Health-Care Reform Actually Happen? (A Teaser)

I’ve spent most of the morning reading a report released last month by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD]. The report presents a comparative analysis of various national health-care systems in an effort to explain why and how health-care costs and demographic measures in the U.S. differ from OECD’s other member countries and what might work to reform health care in the U.S., reducing cost, expanding coverage, and improving outcomes. (Joe Conason’s column in Salon yesterday references the report.)

I’ll have a more detailed summary tomorrow. Besides widely known facts such as the U.S. having a higher infant-mortality rate and lower life expectancy than most of the other member countries, here is a tidbit:

The absence of health insurance is much more prevalent among low-income groups than high-income groups …. Some 48% of households with incomes less than twice the poverty threshold (less than $40 000) were uninsured at some point during 2007, while for households with higher incomes than this the rate was 16%. The uninsured rate drops steadily as household income rises, to 9% for households with incomes four times or more the poverty rate. Households with adults who are in fair/poor health and/or have certain chronic health conditions are more likely to be uninsured than healthier adults. Younger adults are more likely to be uninsured than older adults.

Also, for the period 2000-2007, health-insurance premiums have increased an average 10.3% annually, while average earnings have grown by about 3% annually.

No doubt ideology is going to play centerstage in reform debates. The most basic question is whether health care is a human right. I happen to believe it is. Even those who disagree cannot argue with the fact that quality, universal health care makes economic sense and promotes societal health. Healthy workers are productive workers. Also, as access to resources increases so does knowledge to make better choices. Healthy individuals make healthy families, which form healthy communities.

I’ll have more tomorrow.

In Obama’s Stem Cell Reversal, a Microcosm of GOP Failure

Yesterday, President Obama rescinded an August 2001 Bush directive limiting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The order was Bush’s lone pre-9/11 contribution to American politics: it was also our first sign that our new President was, indeed, as stupid as he looked.

Unfortunately, the intervening eight years and economic disaster have not produced a smarter Republic Party, whose representatives (including Eric Cantor, R-Va) criticized Obama for turning stem cell research into a “distraction” from America’s GOP-made economic problems.

This is wrong on several counts. First, good science is good economics. It’s no accident that biotech stocks like Geron closed up yesterday. President Obama is restoring science leadership, not taking a furlough into the culture war trenches. Second, who are the Republicans to talk about culture-war “distractions”? This is the party that, for eight years, ignored the economy, the experts, and anything substantive to push gay marriage bans during election years while waging the war on terror in the most controversial way possible, just to score ideological points. Why build consensus with the legislature when you can “restore” the unitary executive? George W. Bush never took leadership of anything that mattered, unless he could do so in a narrowly partisan, divisive manner: his entire presidency was a distraction. Ensuring sound science – especially with bipartisan backing including Ronald Reagan’s wife – is no distraction.

The alternative Republican talking point, that any level of biotech research is a slippery slope to human cloning, is no better. To succeed, slippery slope arguments must posit failures of both will and leadership. Given a competent government, such failures need not ever occur, as Barack Obama ably demonstrated in his own repudiation of reproductive cloning. With the right leadership, and the intelligence necessary to draw the line, there’s nothing scary about science that tends towards a troublesome outcome. That Republicans have neither the intellect, nor the desire, nor the political motivation to draw the line safely is a failure of their party, not our science.

Smarter critics will point out that embryonic stem cells aren’t as useful to science now as they would’ve been seven years ago. That’s fair; but it’s also a problem of the GOP’s own creation, and embryonic stem cell research is still quite promising. As is the idea of a president finally willing to responsibly tackle ethical problems in science.