Word: careful
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...idea of taxing employer-provided health insurance as income has plenty of merit. The current system is regressive, with three-quarters of the tax break going to those who are in the top half of the income-distribution scale. And because these more privileged Americans are not buying health care with after-tax money, they have less incentive to use it carefully...
...really cover everyone? No issue did more to sink the Clinton health-care plan than its imposition of an employer mandate - a requirement that companies provide health insurance to their workers. And there's little evidence it will be any easier to include one this time around. "It will be a job killer, because employers who cannot afford it will reduce payroll and not hire new workers," warns Bruce Josten of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. What business would prefer to see - and what Obama rejected during his presidential campaign - is an individual mandate requiring everyone who doesn...
...Without one mandate or the other, or a combination of the two, it will be impossible to get truly universal coverage. Some people - maybe a lot of them - are going to fall through the cracks. More pessimistic veterans of previous battles over health-care reform predict privately that even if a bill passes this year, more than half the nation's uninsured could remain that...
...What will be covered? For universal coverage to have any meaning, there will have to be a minimum set of guaranteed services. But what does that mean? Does it include preventive care? How about mental-health care? Abortion services? These are the kinds of decisions that will determine how expensive health-care reform will be for consumers, business and government. And what goes into the basic benefits package is a political minefield - which is why many health-care experts say they don't want it left in the hands of Congress and lobbyists. "If you start fighting over whether chiropractors...
...will we bring down costs? The problem with American health care, those who have studied the system will tell you, is not that we get too little care but that we use too much. By some estimates, as much as 30 cents of every health-care dollar is spent on medical treatment that is unnecessary, ineffective, duplicative or even harmful. Changing all that is going to require revamping health care from top to bottom, starting with the way health-care providers are reimbursed. While the current system pays them for the amount of care they provide, real reform would...