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Joseph Antos, Gail Wilensky, and Hanns Kuttner The Obama Plan: More Regulation, Unsustainable Spending Health Affairs, November/December 2008; 27(6): w462-w471. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] [Table Of Contents] [Reprints & Permissions]

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Response To Obama Plan Critique

Steve Nesich   ( 17 September 2008 )

Response To Critique Of Obama Plan

Karyl Ting   ( 17 September 2008 )

Response To Article On Obama Plan

Barbara J. Robertson   ( 29 September 2008 )

A Message From Health Affairs' Editor-In-Chief Susan Dentzer

Susan Dentzer   ( 17 October 2008 )

Response To Obama Plan Critique 17 September 2008
Steve Nesich, Principal MarketStrike Send comment to journal: Re: Response To Obama Plan Critique snesich{at}marketstrike.com Steve Nesich	I applaud Health Affairs for publishing pieces on both the Obama and McCain health care plans. However, while four leading academic experts authored the McCain analysis, the Obama critique was unfortunately written by three individuals with a biased ideological perspective. Joseph Antos, Gail Wilensky, and Hanns Kuttner are all right-wing partisans. Antos works for the ultra-conservative, corporate-funded American Enterprise Institute. Wilensky works as an unpaid adviser for John McCain and previously worked for George W. Bush. Kuttner is a former staff person for George H.W. Bush. It’s understandable why these three would sharply criticize the Obama health care plan: Any proposal that might mean a potentially lower profit margin for private health care companies will be savaged by people with this background. Wasn't this clear from the start? Why then would Health Affairs ask these three to write what should have been a more detached, objective analysis? The bottom line for people like Antos, Wilensky, and Kuttner is clear, as it has been for years: Health care is a business. And the first priority is to protect the profits of that business and keep a good return coming to the investors. To do this, expenditures (i.e. treatment that helps people) must be absolutely minimized, as in any "business." The idea that health care should be first and foremost about treating people who need it is an alien concept to these authors. When you start with the premise that health care is primarily about return on private investment, all your critiques will focus on one thing: How do we stop any proposals that would change the health care system to one where private profits aren't the highest priority? Given who they are and whom they work for, the piece by Antos, Wilensky, and Kuttner was quite predictable.
Response To Critique Of Obama Plan 17 September 2008
Karyl Ting, Physician RMPC Send comment to journal: Re: Response To Critique Of Obama Plan jktbaker82{at}gmail.com Karyl Ting	I just finished reading both papers regarding the candidates' health care plans. Having expected an impartial critical analysis of both positions, I was puzzled by the obvious partisan tone and general lack of substantive analysis of the Obama plan, especially after the well-argued and -researched McCain counterpart. I then compared the panels responsible for each argument. Clearly, given the academic credentials of those who wrote the McCain analysis (professors and chairs of academic departments) and the lack of the same on the Obama analysis (with the affiliations of Wilensky, as a McCain adviser; Antos, a fellow with the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute; and Kuttner, a former adviser to the Bush administration), you are making far-stretching claims that these papers are presented as fair and impartial.
Response To Article On Obama Plan 29 September 2008
Barbara J. Robertson, Translator Various hospitals Send comment to journal: Re: Response To Article On Obama Plan robarb07{at}nc.rr.com Barbara J. Robertson	How very disappointing to find that the article, purported to educate us re: the health plan of Barack Obama, has as its authors three known supporters of John McCain. Joe Antos belongs to the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative organization that, over the past year, has flooded the media with radically, anti-Obama commentary, in its efforts to make sure that the Republicans retain the White House. The bias greatly undermines the quality of this journal. How about engaging a neutral party of health economists to write an article examining the elements of the Obama plan?
A Message From Health Affairs' Editor-In-Chief Susan Dentzer 17 October 2008
Susan Dentzer, Editor-in-Chief Health Affairs Send comment to journal: Re: A Message From Health Affairs' Editor-In-Chief Susan Dentzer sdentzer{at}projecthope.org Susan Dentzer	Several months ago a paper was submitted to us for publication critiquing the health reform proposals of Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Senator John McCain. Its authors are respected health economists from Columbia University, the Harvard School of Public Health, the University of Michigan, and Indiana University, all supportive of the campaign of Illinois Senator Barack Obama. We immediately saw the value in publishing the paper in the interests of furthering the intellectual debate over health reform proposals in a presidential election year. However, for this debate to reach full flower and to be carried out in an open and bipartisan way, we believed it necessary that the paper be paired with one critiquing the health reform proposals of Senator Obama. Thus, we reached out to respected health economists on the other side, all supportive of Senator McCain, and invited them to write a critique of Senator Obama's plans. One, Gail Wilensky, the Senior Fellow at Project HOPE and former administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration under President George H.W. Bush, is a volunteer adviser to Senator McCain's campaign, as we knew in advance and as was fully disclosed when the paper was published. Another, Joseph Antos, is a Scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and formerly Assistant Director for Health and Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office. Both of these papers were put through peer review by four separate reviewers apiece. Revisions were made, and language was carefully edited. In their final form, both papers comported with the high standards Health Affairs requires of the papers we publish. We are happy to have participated in the national debate in bringing them to the public's attention.