Recession Overshadows Health Care

ft.com — With the housing market in severe trouble and a recession all but certain, the economy has of late pushed health policy down the list of voters’ concerns. At the end of last year, according to polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan health policy institute, health care was the most important issue for 21 percent of registered voters, almost neck-and-neck with the economy. Today the economy has taken a 62 per cent share, and health care is the main priority for only 12 per cent. Yet America’s complex and expensive system of health care, most of it still provided by employers, has economic as well as social effects, being an important cause of personal bankruptcy and a hefty burden on business.

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