Bush will offer plans to boost health care

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Bush will ask Congress for new tax credits to help people buy health insurance and more than $3 billion to expand government-run insurance programs, boosting ideas supported by both liberals and conservatives.

The president also plans to ask for more money for community health centers, which care for many uninsured patients and have long been promoted by Bush as an important part of the nation’s health-care solution.

With 44 million Americans lacking insurance, the issue is before Congress constantly. Still, lawmakers failed to act last year, and debate over how much the unemployed need to help pay for health insurance has kept a stimulus package stuck on Capitol Hill.

The Bush plan will be detailed in the budget he submits to Congress next week. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is expected to preview it today.

The first piece of his proposal would recycle $3.2 billion allocated to the Children’s Health Insurance Program but not spent by the states. The money is scheduled to return to the federal treasury, but Bush is asking Congress to make it available to states that want to expand their of the plans and Medicaid to more low-income children or to their parents.

The money was expected to be spent over at least two years, administration officials said.

This is the approach to helping the uninsured that Democrats generally prefer. These state-run programs offer families health insurance directly, meaning parents don’t have to shop around for coverage and are guaranteed a basic package of benefits.

Conservatives typically prefer a free-market approach, which would have families choose their own health insurance packages in the open market. Bush’s plan, first made when he was running for president and included in his budget last year, will offer tax breaks to help pay premiums.

This year’s proposal will be essentially unchanged and worth up to $1,000 per person or $2,000 per couple, according to an administration official speaking on condition of anonymity. Like last year, it will be available to people who don’t owe federal taxes — typically people with very low incomes — meaning they would get money back from the government to help buy insurance.

Last year’s proposal, which was phased in over a number of years, set the income limit at $30,000 in adjusted gross income for individual tax filers and $60,000 for married couples. Taxpayers would only get the credit if they bought insurance.

The plan’s cost was estimated at $71.5 billion over 10 years.

The president also will propose an increase of $114 million for community health centers, bringing the total to $1.5 billion, an 8 percent increase over this year’s appropriation.

Additionally, the budget plan will propose $350 million to continue Medicaid coverage for families that have recently left welfare. Without this extension, most parents would lose health coverage when they left the rolls. Eligibility for some help would continue for many children, but the new coverage might cost these families more than Medicaid did.