Today's Opinions and Editorials: The costs of public employees' health benefits, more on Medicare Advantage, and will reform undermine medical innovation?

As Reform Improves The Overall Market, Inefficient Insurers Could Take Hits Kaiser Health News
We want to spend just a little less, so that we have more money for other purposes. And we want to spend just a little differently, so that we're getting a higher quality, more humane health care system (Jonathan Cohn, 8/30).

More Health Care Fiction Boston Herald
The notion that "if you like your health plan you can keep it" under ObamaCare has already been proven a lie. Just ask the 200,000 Massachusetts residents enrolled in Medicare Advantage who will be forced to switch, with the elimination of that popular program (8/30).

Candidates Must Back Changes To Municipal Health, Pensions The Boston Globe
They include two long-sought changes to health plans — giving local officials the power to design insurance coverage outside of collective bargaining, and requiring cities and towns to shift eligible retirees onto Medicare (8/29).

Washington State Can't Afford Deluxe Worker Benefits The Seattle Times
The governor, at long last, has it right. The health-care proposal could save $268 million by bringing state employee benefits more in line with the private sector — a must-do for the next round of budget cuts (8/27).

Americans' Benefits Will Be Stripped, Innovation Stymied La Crosse (Wis.) Tribune
Higher health costs, lost jobs, lower wages, higher taxes and less medical innovation — American workers will not be more prosperous as a result of ObamaCare. We need health sector reform, but this isn't it (Grace-Marie Turner, 8/30).

Cut Spending To Help Seniors Muskogee (Okla.) Phoenix
Save Medicare and Medicaid, and, do so without additional taxes. The number of seniors in the United States is growing and many will rely on government help for their health care. It is our obligation to keep this assistance flowing (8/29).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.