It isn’t as bad as the various Democrat plans, but it’s nothing to write home about. The major problem with the Republican version of health reform is that it is a ”disconnected set of ideas,” as John Goodman phrases it, cobbled together with very little serious thought.
As to the plan’s specifics, it’s not all bad. It would, for example, permit association health plans and insurance sales across state lines. It also includes much-needed malpractice reform and would expand (rather than kill) Health Savings Accounts.
Unfortunately, it would (like the Dem plans) use government to do things that the market can do better. It would require insurance companies to carry dependents on their parents’ plans through age 25, and it would restrict “unjust” rescissions and annual spending caps.
Ironically, it will be praised for these defects and lambasted for one of its primary virtues—that it avoids exacerbating our deficit problems to fix the largely fictional problem of “the uninsured.” Here’s a typical example of the nonsense that is being written about that issue:
Does it actually tackle the question of covering the 40 million or so people without access to insurance? No, it does not. It could insure an extra 3 million tops. Vast numbers of people would be shut out of access to insurance because they just cannot afford it.
The absence of an expensive provision dealing with the “40 million or so” uninsured is a feature, not a bug. Even if there were that many uninsured, a myth that I and many others have repeatedly debunked, the fix for that is LESS state and federal intervention in the health care market.
If congressional Republicans had gotten out in front with a serious, market-based reform alternative, we might be having a more intelligent health care debate. But this GOP plan was put together by the same people who backed the absurd Dede Scozzafava for NY-23.
UPDATE I:
Morrissey reports that the CBO has scored this plan at better than budget neutral, and that it will reduce insurance premiums:
Their plan, which relies on interstate competition, HSAs, and tort reform, would only cost $61 billion in the first ten years of the plan — or slightly less than 6% of what Democrats plan to spend to overhaul the entire system … Unlike the Democratic proposals, the bill would actually reduce premiums.
As I say, this proposal is better than the Dem plans, but that is the very definition of faint praise.
UPDATE II:
Philip Klein at AmSpec is also underwhelmed by the plan:
The GOP proposal isn’t what I would consider real reform. It’s more of a document that Republicans have put out so they can say they have some sort of health care bill that reduces premiums at a fraction of the cost of the Democrats’ bill.
Yep. It’s a political document from a party that has been sitting on the sidelines of health reform for too long.
Post a Comment