Summaries of a number of recent editorials and an opinion piece on the health care proposals that President Bush announced in his State of the Union address appear below.

• Daytona Beach News-Journal: "In BushWorld, people pay more for their own health care" to increase access and reduce costs, a News-Journal editorial states. However, the editorial concludes, "If the president was serious about increasing access to health care, he'd push ... toward universal, comprehensive coverage. Carefully chosen buzzwords can't hide the reality: His plan will push Americans further from the care they need" (Daytona Beach News-Journal, 2/1).
  
  
• Manchester Union Leader: Bush in his State of the Union address asked Congress to "control entitlement spending, but he is responsible for the most financially reckless expansion of entitlement spending in a generation -- the Medicare prescription drug benefit," a Union Leader editorial states. According to the editorial, Congress "won't control spending on its own" and "needs a president so committed to sane budgeting that he is willing -- no, eager -- to veto bills that irresponsibly saddle the American taxpayers with needless federal programs, services and pork" (Manchester Union Leader, 2/3).
  
  
• Memphis Commercial Appeal: Bush should have discussed the issue of the uninsured in his State of the Union address, a Commercial Appeal editorial states. Health care access is a "matter of life and death to the poor and the uninsurable," and the issue "represents additional burdens for state and local governments," the editorial adds (Memphis Commercial Appeal, 2/2).
  
  
• Memphis Commercial Appeal: Bush received "sneers" for his proposal to establish a bipartisan commission to "come up with a plan to address the impact of the Baby Boom generation on federal entitlement programs," but the "plan deserves a closer look," according to a Commercial Appeal editorial. Although such commissions often "seem to go nowhere," the proposal does not "have to be an automatic death sentence" for reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the editorial states (Memphis Commercial Appeal, 2/3).
  
  
• New York Times: "Unsurprisingly," the proposed expansion of health savings accounts that Bush announced in his State of the Union address would "favor the healthy and wealthy at the expense of the poor and chronically sick," a Times editorial states, adding that the accounts are not "apt to trim the nation's health expenditures" and would "have no effect on the relatively small percentage of high-cost patients who account for most of the nation's medical spending." According to the editorial, the "great danger" is that HSAs "could accelerate the erosion of traditional employer-provided insurance, as companies try to reduce their health expenditures by shifting more of the costs onto workers" (New York Times, 2/3).
  
  
• E.J. Dionne, Washington Post: The "most striking default" in the State of the Union address "was on health care, an issue that the president's team has signaled will be a big deal for the administration this year," columnist Dionne writes in a Post opinion piece. The proposals for electronic health records and health insurance portability would do "little to help" the uninsured, and HSAs "aren't really health plans" but "tax-avoidance investment vehicles ... that will mostly help the healthy and the wealthy, while raising costs for the sick," Dionne writes (Dionne, Washington Post, 2/3).