Editorials
Monday, July 29, 1996
Health-care reform measure
nears passage
AFTER several false starts, the way appears to be clear for enactment of a health-care reform law, although it will be far from a comprehensive one. An agreement among congressional leaders has removed a major obstacle to a bill that would allow workers to obtain new health insurance, even if they have pre-existing illnesses.
The key was agreement on a four-year test of tax-exempt medical saving accounts, which would be used by the insured to pay routine medical expenses. In addition, part of the premium paid by employers and employees would pay for a catastrophic illness policy to cover major medical problems. The idea is to give people an incentive to reduce their medical expenses.
This issue, while important as a possible way to control the cost of health care, is secondary to the main purpose of the measure: to give people who change or lose jobs the right to obtain health insurance, even with a pre-existing medical condition. The lack of such assurance, called portability, has been a deterrent to changing jobs and has made the loss of a job for some a calamity.
The medical savings accounts became an issue because the House included them in its health insurance bill, which it passed on March 28. The Senate rejected the accounts when it passed its bill on April 23. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who had cosponsored the measure with Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., had blocked the bill's progress because he objected to Republican attempts to include medical savings accounts.
The agreement that broke the deadlock calls for a test involving up to 750,000 policies for the self-employed and people in businesses with 50 or fewer employees. The pilot program would last four years.
Still to be resolved are disputes over whether to require that insurers give the same coverage for mental illness as for physical ailments and what would be required of insurers to make policies portable. However, final agreement is now in sight on a measure that would significantly improve health insurance protection for millions of Americans.
Olympic explosion
ONE death and a dozen or so serious injuries - it could have been much worse if a guard hadn't been alert - do not qualify the explosion of a pipe bomb at the Atlanta Olympics as a major disaster. However, the location and timing of the blast, in the midst of the Olympic Games, gave it a psychological importance far beyond the physical damage it wrought.
The proliferation of firearms, explosives and toxic substances has enabled small groups with little or no external support to wreak havoc in our cities and transportation systems. The explosion in Atlanta may have been the last blow needed to destroy Americans' sense of security. More security measures will of course be taken and many terrorists will be captured and punished, but the sense of security will not be easily restored.
Hawaii's prisons boss
THE retirement of George Iranon as director of the Department of Public Safety, scheduled Sept. 1, poses a challenge for the Cayetano administration to fill the vacancy he leaves with a capable replacement. The prison system faces severe problems with overcrowding, inhumane treatment of prisoners and abuses of overtime and sick leave by guards. Iranon has made progress, but problems persist.
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