McHugh, Oot write different prescriptions for sick health-care system
IF ELECTED: Congressional candidates speak on the issuesBy NATHAN BROWN, Enterprise Staff Writer
SARANAC LAKE - The U.S. spends 16 percent of its gross domestic product on health care and still has tens of millions of uninsured people. Here in the Adirondacks, there simply aren't enough general practitioners to provide adequate help to everyone who needs it.
There are many things to admire about our health care system: wait times for treatment are much lower here than in Canada, and people come from many other countries to receive surgery in the U.S. But the system simply isn't available to many people who can't afford.
In the 23rd Congressional District of New York, Republican incumbent John McHugh and Democratic challenger Mike Oot agree on all these things, but they have vastly different ideas about how to increase access to health care and reduce the cost.
McHugh emphasizes a market-based approach to relieving the burden of health care costs, such as providing tax credits to purchase health care and limiting malpractice lawsuits. He also emphasizes the importance of increasing the accessibility of health care in underserved rural areas. Oot, by contrast, favors an end to the system of private health insurance and replacing it with a universal, government-run, single-payer system modeled on Medicare, leaving the hospitals and the clinics in the private sector. This is the only way, he says, to provide full coverage for everyone in America.
Candidates' views are presented in alphabetical order by last name.
McHugh
McHugh said he opposes a government-run health care or insurance system, saying it would bring down the quality of health care.
"I think the last thing Americans want to see is a mandatory nationwide program that takes away the health insurance of millions of Americans and forces them into a Medicare-like program," he said.
"As to the cost perspective, if you listen to the health care professionals, they say one of the most simple and quickest things we could do is pass, on a national level, meaningful medical malpractice reform," he said. "In states like California, where they reformed their tort system and malpractice system and put in reasonable measures, it had a great dampening effect on the costs of health care."
McHugh also said he favored giving tax credits to the working poor and middle-class families to purchase health insurance.
"That way, we could preserve all that's good about this nation's health care system without placing everyone into a cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all program that we can see in other nations hasn't worked well," he said.
McHugh drafted such a bill several years ago, and he said "some Presidential candidates" have been talking about doing this. It is central to McCain's plan, and a smaller part of Obama's.
"Maybe its time has come," he said.
Oot
"I am absolutely in favor of H.R. 676," Oot said. "I am incensed by the fact that we have 35 million uninsured people in this country."
H.R. 676, or the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, would create a universal, single-payer health insurance system, modeled on Medicare.
"It's national health insurance," Oot said, "but you select your provider."
The bill, which was written by U.S. Reps. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and John Conyers of Michigan and first introduced in 2003, would assign every American a national health insurance number and ban private insurance providers from selling insurance in competition with the government. It includes coverage for many things that many insurance plans don't currently cover, including all prescription drugs, dental, eye and mental health care, and addiction treatment. Doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers would supposedly be little affected by the new system, as the government would simply replace the insurance company. Oot said many major unions support the measure, including the National Education Association, the United Auto Workers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Oot said health insurance costs would drop dramatically with a national system since, he said, so much money is spent on the salaries of the top executives and on processing claims - often with an eye toward finding a reason to deny the claim.
"Insurance companies spend 30 to 40 percent on processing claims," Oot said. "It is very expensive to deny claims."
Oot said most of the people currently working for insurance companies would not lose their jobs under national health insurance, since they could do similar jobs for the government. He also said people should not be worried about the new system being inefficient as, while many government programs have been run poorly, the government's health care programs have not been.
"Medicare has done an exemplary job of spending taxpayer dollars," he said.
Contact Nathan Brown at 891-2600 ext. 26 or nbrown@adirondackdailyenterprise.com.
