POLITICAL BRIEFING

BAD REVIEWS: Two leading medical economists have analyzed the health care plans offered by President Bush and Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton and found each lacking. “Both promise millions of Americans added health benefits,” but “both spare voters the troublesome thought that someone must pay for the promised new benefits,” wrote Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhardt in the New England Journal of Medicine. . . . Stanford University Prof. Alain Enthoven said Bush’s plan to reform the health insurance market “points in the right direction.” But it “leaves in place some of the worst anti-competitive features of the present failed market.” . . . As for Clinton, Enthoven said that his plan leaves open many questions, in part because of its vagueness about cost controls. If it ends up relying on federal price controls for health care services, it will fail, Enthoven asserted.