RSS Feed MenuLast week, a Senate committee approved a bill for “Quality, Affordable Health Care” — or “QAHC.” This QAHC-mire of a bill would inflict on our country a very real fiscal wound from which we would not soon recover.
Doug Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), had this to say about the proposed legislation: “the [cost] curve is being raised.” Indeed, the reform is now expected to cost more than $1 trillion. This at a time when the United States finds itself in a major economic crisis and saddled with already staggering deficits. After the string of recent bailouts and stimuli, the 2009 budget deficit is projected at $1.8 trillion. The 2010 deficit will be $1.4 trillion. And the CBO has stated that total deficits from 2010 to 2019 will be $9.3 trillion.
President Obama disingenuously argues that this proposed healthcare reform is part of a broader plan for restoring the country’s fiscal condition, and that doing nothing will have even more negative ramifications. This sort of argument is QAHC-ery on a grand scale. It is absurd to suggest that raising the cost curve for healthcare in the United States will somehow improve our economic condition.
Equally absurd, however, is the suggestion that the alternative to QAHC is to simply do nothing. The Patients’ Choice Act, for example, introduced in May by Republican Senators Tom Coburn and Richard Burr, provides a far more fiscally sound alternative by encouraging a more competitive market for health insurance. The bill would shift the healthcare tax benefit from corporations to individuals, so that consumers are no longer restricted to those insurance options that their employers happen to offer, and so that consumers are not uninsured when they are in between jobs. Another reform that merits consideration (but is not in the Patients’ Choice Act) is the elimination of federal regulations that prohibit the purchase of out-of-state insurance, so that consumers will have a larger variety of healthcare options available to them.
What about the subset of the population that is not able to afford health insurance? For them, the Patients’ Choice Act would provide healthcare vouchers that would be used to purchase private insurance. The result would be near-universal health insurance, achieved far less disruptively and more cost-effectively than under the new federal health insurance program proposed in the Senate committee’s bill — a 600-page bill so complicated and convoluted that its implementation would no doubt require the establishment of entirely new offices within the Department of Health and Human Services.
President Obama is now trying to rush along the process of passing this bill, much like he rushed the process for passing the stimulus. We all know how that turned out. Americans across the political spectrum — even those who are strong supporters of a universal entitlement to healthcare — would do well to demand that their elected leaders proceed with caution, not according to an arbitrary timetable. President Obama and members of Congress must pause to think about the debilitating effect QAHC would have on at least one sick patient — the U.S. economy.
sinz54 // Jul 23, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I’ve just about given up trying to explain to free market purists why health care doesn’t fit neatly into free-market theories. And why competition won’t lower health care costs.
This proposal, which is exactly what McCain proposed in 2008, has been deconstructed over and over as unworkable. It neither leads toward greatly expanded coverage; nor does it help those with pre-existing conditions; nor does it lower costs. I’m going to waste my time going over it yet one more time. That’s what Google is for.
sinz54 // Jul 23, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Have the Congressional Budget Office review and score the Republican proposal. Until then, it’s not worth discussing.
ottovbvs // Jul 24, 2009 at 8:43 am
sinz54 // Jul 23, 2009 at 12:04 pm
……….How can I handle this…..I agree with you…….the McCain plan had more holes than swiss cheese…….healthcare for a family of four costs about $13,500……..they are proposing a tax credit of around $5000 to enable you all on your little ownsome to go out and negotiate with United Healthcare……..pre-existing conditions…..all a bit vague……..the 46 million without health…….doesn’t do anything for them
Joe In NH // Jul 25, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I will be happy to support any program that doesn’t exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions (at least of everyone who has had coverage in place and thus not the case of someone waiting till sick to get insurance) and has community pricing instead of individual pricing. Obamacare does that. I have not seen any GOP plans addressing the issue of pre-existing conditions other than vague references to encouraging states to set up some sort of pools for those unable to otherwise get decent coverage. Vague language but nothing specific from the right. If the GOP wants to be taken seriously, address pre-existing conditions and community vs individual pricing.