Other Voices

“The debate over healthcare costs often deals with systemic matters—redundant administration, competition for expensive high-tech diagnostic devices, fees for quantity of services rather than quality of care, unnecessary procedures, excessive drug prescriptions and so on. Often missing from the healthcare debate is a fundamental issue: health. F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2012, a report by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, demonstrates why it is crucial not only for the health of individuals, but for the health of the economy and the nation, for Americans to slow the obesity epidemic. If obesity rates continue on their current trajectories … 13 states could have adult obesity rates above 60% by 2030, 39 states could have rates above 50%, and all 50 states could have rates above 44%. … Obesity already has passed smoking as the nation's leading driver of disease and attendant healthcare costs. Education and … policy can make a difference. … As federal law makes health insurance available to more Americans, it also should make preventive care an even higher priority.”

—The Citizens' Voice, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

“As the presidential campaign unfolds, the differences in approaches to Medicare by President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have taken center stage. But what is getting far less scrutiny: Romney's plans for Medicaid. He would convert the healthcare program for the poor, disabled and elderly into a block grant to the states and sharply reduce funding over time. Middle-class Americans should be especially wary, since it's Medicaid, not Medicare, that covers nursing home care for aged and infirm parents and grandparents. Without Medicaid's safety net, it isn't clear what those Americans would do, and Romney doesn't have any good answers. … There is an irony to Romney running mate Paul Ryan's applause line at the Republican National Convention … that 'the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.' It was Ryan who authored the plan to convert Medicaid from a strong federal-state entitlement to a block grant program ... that Romney has incorporated into his campaign. The plan, passed as a budget blueprint ... would gut Medicaid's safety net and focus instead on cutting funds.”

—Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times