Bush's Failed Health Care Legacy

A New York Times editorial praises President Bush for some worthy achievements in health care: " As we have argued in the past, Mr. Bush deserves high praise for significantly increasing American support for the global effort to control AIDS... there is little doubt that the president has played a key role in providing drug treatments or supportive care to millions of patients who would otherwise have gone untended." The Times editorial points out that: "It is a remarkable record for the leader of a party that had been reluctant in the Reagan era to deal with a disease whose victims at the time in this country were primarily gay men and injection drug users. Equally remarkable was Mr. Bush’s decision to push through a costly new prescription drug benefit under the Medicare program for older Americans despite stout opposition in his party to government-run health care. It was the largest expansion of Medicare in decades and it dragged the program, at long last, into the modern medical era, in which drugs are a cornerstone of treatment." The Times points out their objections "to many features of the program — the refusal to allow the government to negotiate with manufacturers for lower prices, shortfalls in providing subsidies to low-income Americans, a failure to protect many patients from high out-of-pocket costs. Still, it has achieved its main goal by reducing the percentage of older Americans who lack drug coverage, from 33 percent before the program started to only 8 percent in 2006.Less heralded was the Bush administration’s willingness to grant Massachusetts a Medicaid waiver to redeploy federal funds to help start a universal health insurance program... Another substantial health achievement came in the form of bricks and mortar, through the president’s vigorous support of community health clinics." These achievements, the Times notes do not absolve the Bush Administration for it's most glaring failures in health care, including: " its failure to address the problem of millions of uninsured Americans or stem the rising costs of health care, its refusal to expand eligibility for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, its devious maneuvers to cut Medicaid spending, its support of unjustified subsidies for private health plans, to name a few." Regardless of the Times' list of Bush achievements, I believe that there is no doubt that President Bush deserves a low grade for his overall performance in matters of health care; his most glaring omission has been his failure to provide health care insurance to the millions of American's who must face each day of their lives without adequate and affordable heath care protection - a trip to the emergency room is not the way to solve our national health care shortfall. President-elect Obama has been left with many tasks that President Bush failed to accomplish. I hope that Obama's efforts will prove to be more productive than Bush's failures to act on issues of major significance regarding health care.