Whither health care under Bush?

Abstract

In his first few hours in office, President George W. Bush issued directives to suspend a host of last-minute directives from his predecessor—among them >800 pages of new guidelines that provide protections for poor individuals covered under federal and state-funded Medicaid programs. Older regulations, including patient protection regulations for Medicare patients and patients in plans regulated by ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act), remain in place, but they could be under scrutiny by Bush aides. In his second healthcare-related action, Mr Bush reversed Mr Clinton’s overturning of rules that barred international family planning organizations from receiving US aid if they performed or promoted abortions. Whether the Bush actions were directed against the regulations themselves or against former President Clinton, who issued a plethora of wide-ranging orders in the final days of his presidency, was as unclear as the direction in which the new president’s healthcare policy will go. Bush has billed himself as the “education president,” but the effect that will have on health care is unclear. According to Washington insiders, health care and education are usually lumped into the same money basket, meaning proposals for one inevitably mean fewer funds for the other. Even the one issue that seemed most clear—abortion—is now muddied by the statement by Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft during attorney-general confirmation hearings that he would be unlikely to seek opportunities to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal in the United States. President Bush was said to be seeking means to overturn some of Clinton’s executive orders in favor of abortion rights. During his presidency, Clinton eliminated the 1988 gag rule that barred health professionals in federally supported family planning clinics from counseling patients about abortion. He …