When the buzz around Sarah Palin settles, we at Healthcare United will bet that voters will primarily be concerned with one thing: where does she stand on the issues? As our focus here is on healthcare, we thought we'd take a look at Sarah Palin's healthcare record in order to see what her influence in this area might be if she and John McCain get to the White House.

Due to her relatively short term as a governor, there's not a ton to sift through, and analysts are doing a good bit of reading in between the lines.

One conclusion is that between her record and public statements, Palin is, according to Robert Laszewski of The Health Care Blog, "staunchly free market." Laszewski bases his conclusion mainly on an opinion piece written by Palin and published in the Anchorage Daily News.

A Washington Post article on Palin and healthcare reform she pushed in Alaska says it was "an aggressive, uncompromising and, to date, unsuccessful push to promote competition -- an effort consistent with her free-market ideals, but also welcomed by the medical groups that helped finance her 2006 campaign and an industry lobbyist who served as a top political adviser." (Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090403253_pf.html)

An analysis by Joe Paduda at Managed Care Matters says "the short take (is that) she has no clue what she's talking about."

He continues:

"Here's the net. Palin's doctrinaire position on health care is in lock-step with the GOP - it relies on an unfounded and unsupported faith in the free market's ability to somehow reduce health care costs and increase quality, despite all evidence that there is no such linkage.

What does this mean for you?

As John Wennberg and others have demonstrated conclusively, the more supply there is, the higher costs are. Health care is not like other economic goods, no matter how much Palin et al may want it to be. If you are looking for solutions you'll not get any examining Palin's record on health care."

Link: http://www.joepaduda.com/archives/001282.html

Sarah Palin does have a concrete record on health care for children. As governor of Alaska, she signed legislation limiting the eligibility level for Alaska's State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to families living below 175 percent of the poverty line -- among the lowest eligibility of any state in the nation. Palin did not support legislation to expand eligibility to higher levels. (Link: http://thinkprogress.org/palin-digest/#healthcare)

As more information about Sarah Palin comes out, we'll be informing all of you here on the Healthcare United blog. We also look forward to covering the issue as the election season rolls on and the debates are held.

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