Word: musts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This year's enactment of catastrophic health insurance, the most dramatic expansion of Medicare since its inception, demonstrated that Washington can still respond creatively to a problem without busting the budget. There is a rightful consensus that expansion of the nation's health-care system must largely pay for itself; catastrophic health insurance will be paid for by premiums from those who stand to benefit. The program shows what commitment and ingenuity can produce, with the right leadership...
...first step in medical reform must be cost containment. Americans spent half a trillion public and private dollars on health care last year. Costs are skyrocketing at a yearly rate of 8.5%, more than double that of inflation and faster than in any other segment of the federal budget. By 1990 health-care costs will consume more than 12% of the nation's GNP, further draining resources from defense, education and other vital federal programs. President Bush or President Dukakis will be greeted his first year in office with a Medicare bill of $101 billion...
...says Marion Ein Lewin, of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. A Rand Corp. review of carotid endarterectomies, operations aimed at clearing blocked neck arteries, found nearly a third of the procedures "inappropriate." Similar questions have been raised about heart bypass operations and pacemakers. The next Administration must put a premium on value and coordinate a nationwide re-examination of diagnostic and surgical procedures to curtail the exorbitant, unnecessary or inferior...
...source by family doctors. Physicians' gross income from Medicare cases went up 16.3% last year alone. Employees of private industry saw a rise of less than 4% during that same period. Congress should weigh such numbers as it considers revising Medicare fee schedules. Nor are the patients blameless: Americans must come to learn that more expensive machines and elaborate procedures are not always better and that their demands for risk-free care risk pricing medicine beyond everyone's reach...
Cost containment alone won't cure the medical system. New sources of revenue must be found. Begin by doubling the federal excise tax on cigarettes. In recent years smoking has been recognized for what it is: an addiction and a health threat, often even to bystanders. This Administration championed "zero tolerance" and urged Americans to "Just say no" to other drugs. Let the next Administration commit itself to leading the U.S. away from its single most deadly habit. Cigarettes kill an estimated 300,000 Americans annually. That is 15% of the deaths in the country, far more than are caused...