HEALTH REFORM And The Political Agenda
February 5th, 2007
by
Jane Hiebert-White
|
In an op-ed column in yesterday’s Washington Post, David Broder wrote of the swelling momentum on health reform. In reading the tea leaves on the new political attention to increasing health care coverage, he cited the pre-election analysis of Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman and Harvard professor Robert Blendon posted on the Health Affairs Blog:
“Last October, health-care experts Drew Altman and Robert Blendon wrote in the journal Health Affairs that “the presidential candidates’ level of attention will be decisive to where health ranks on the national agenda going into the 2008 election and the 2009 Congress. If they do play a leadership role on health, the media will follow, and the agenda-setting power of a debate driven from the top will meet the public’s concern rising up from the bottom like two weather fronts colliding.””
As we enter the early stages of the presidential campaign, candidates and current president are daring to touch the third rail of health reform. President Bush spoke of reform in his State of the Union address. Broder noted that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) “showed her mastery of the subject, explaining what had gone wrong in 1994 and the lessons learned.” Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), in a recent speech, issued a call for “bold reform” in health care. He said: “Plans that tinker and halfway measures now belong to yesterday. . . . I am working with experts to develop my own plan as we speak.” Obama’s call for health reform has sparked considerable interest.
Further reading. For more blog debate on Senator Obama’s speech, see Ezra Klein’s and John McDonough’s recent posts. And for a thoughtful analysis of “The Rise and Resounding Demise of the Clinton Plan,” see Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol’s classic 1995 paper in Health Affairs [free access].
Email This Post
Print This Post
