Professional Documents
Culture Documents
News Excellence Sept 20 A8
News Excellence Sept 20 A8
www.centredaily.com
OPINION
www.centredaily.com
S I N C E 1 8 9 8
Debra Leithauser
President/Publisher
dleithauser@centredaily.com
John Boogert
Executive Editor
jboogert@centredaily.com
Members of the editorial board are responsible for the editorial content of this page
THEIR VIEW
More action
needed on
health reform
The numbers are in: Obamacare reduced the share of Americans without
health insurance last year to 10.4 percent, down from 13.3 percent the year
before. That represents 8.8 million fewer
people who risked financial ruin if they
needed significant medical care. Most of
the improvement came from people
getting coverage through Medicaid or
the state insurance exchanges.
The figures put to rest the notion that
Obamacare would cause more people to
lose coverage than gain it. But U.S. health
care is by no means fixed. Three substantial
improvements are still needed.
First, the uninsured rate needs to be
pushed even lower. The people whove
signed up for Medicaid or exchange coverage are those who have most wanted
insurance; the challenge remains to persuade those who are less motivated or dont
understand their options. That includes the
parents of the 4.8 million children who were
uninsured last year, as well as the 30.6
percent of high-school dropouts and the
19.9 percent of Hispanics who went without.
At the same time, all 50 states need to be
persuaded to expand Medicaid.
The administration and Congress also
have to make sure that people can afford to
use their insurance. Copayments and deductibles continue to rise, with almost one
in four people saying such costs have led
them to put off treatment for a serious
condition. Solutions include lower caps on
cost-sharing, extending subsidies and even
reforming the Cadillac tax on high-quality
employer-sponsored insurance policies, a
tax that encourages companies to shift costs
to patients. Perhaps most important is the
need to find ways to deliver care more
efficiently higher quality for lower cost.
Obamacare includes pilot projects to experiment with coordinating treatments, and
although the results have been mixed so
far, thats only reason to try harder. Theres
also room to bring down drug costs by
letting Medicare negotiate prices.
These are hard problems that require
clever solutions from both political parties. Successful health care reform begins with shrinking the share of Americans without insurance, but that doesnt
finish the job.
The above editorial was written by
Bloomberg View editors.
AP photo/Eyman Mohamed
school.
Ahmed Mohamed, a
14-year-old ninth-grader from
MacArthur High in Irving,
Texas, had built the digital
clock at home and was eager to
show it to his engineering
teacher, who liked it. When his
English teacher saw it, however, she thought it looked like a
bomb. Next thing he knew, the
teenage tinkerer, who wants to
be an engineer when he grows
up, was under arrest.
Theres a picture of him
Letters policy
On Twitter?
The Centre Daily Times accepts original letters of up to 250 words. They must include the
writers name, address and telephone number. A writer is limited to one letter a month, and
letters are subject to editing. Send letters to cdtletters@centredaily.com; visit the opinion
page at CentreDaily.com and click on Send us your letters; mail them to Letters to the
Editor, P.O. Box 89, State College, PA 16804; or fax them to 238-1811.
Follow
@CDT
Opinion
for CDT
editorials.
Have an iPhone
or Droid?
Download the
Centre Daily Times
app and look for the
opinion section.