Health care reform is likely to be a key topic in Wednesday night’s presidential candidate debate

Health care reform is likely to be a key topic in Wednesday night’s presidential candidate debate, which examines domestic issues and caps off the series of three meetings between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry.

Timothy McBride, Ph.D., professor of health management and policy at Saint Louis University School of Public Health and one of the nation’s foremost authorities on questions involving the uninsured and those on Medicare, can analyze the candidates’ positions.

According to various polls, health care and the economy are among the top concerns of American voters. “There are close connections between the economy and health care,” McBride says. “Some employers are slow to add jobs because they’re paying so much in health benefits. And when health care costs go up, wages don’t go up as fast.”

He says the two candidates approach health care from very different perspectives. “It’s a pretty stark contrast in ideological approaches,” McBride says.

Bush favors spending about $130 billion over the next decade to add insurance for between 2 and 6.7 million Americans, mostly by offering tax credits. He supports creating cooperatives and associations that allow small businesses to pool their resources to purchase health insurance.

Kerry would cover the cost of insurance for catastrophic illness for employers and expand insurance coverage for 27 million low-income families and children. His plan would cost between $650 billion to $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

In addition, Kerry would roll back many of the provisions of the recent Medicare reforms that Bush will continue to support.