The Opinion Blog

Reform for Some

Saturday’s editorial examines how health-care reform seems poised to aid the uninsured and those who can’t get insurance for their employers, but will do little for the majority of Americans who receive insurance through their workplace.

Washington's long effort to overhaul the nation's health-care system is now closer to reality than it ever has been, with five House and Senate committees all passing similar bills. While the plans have their differences, they all indulge in the apparent paradox of completely rebuilding the system – without major change to most people's coverage.

The health bill the President will sign?

I don't normally do this, but I'm going to post the entirety of an item from Congressional Quarterly. So if you read what's below, give a courtesy click to http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=cqmidday-000003201570 so that neither you nor The Opinion Blog is stealing.

Senate Finance Committee negotiators neared completion Monday of a health care bill that would cost an estimated $880 billion over 10 years and include language aimed at reducing medical liability lawsuits.

The cost of the bill, newly estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, would be fully offset by spending cuts or new revenues, said Kent Conrad, D-N.D. “In fact, we’re a little bit to the good.”

The six negotiators — three Democrats and three Republicans — were expected to meet again later in the day, Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said, and remain on track to produce a draft bill by the end of the week. Baucus also planned an evening meeting with other Finance Committee Democrats to bring them up to date on the talks.

The six negotiators plan to talk Tuesday with state governors to discuss how much of the cost of a Medicaid expansion the states would be required to pay.

Baucus said the bill’s programs “are not going to cost states as much as originally feared.” The lower costs, which Baucus has not detailed, result from changes to the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid drug rebates.

Conrad said the draft bill would enable states to run demonstration projects with federal support to reduce medical liability lawsuits. One proposal is to require lawsuits to have a “certificate of merit” from experts before they can proceed.

The significance of this is that it's the first health-reform bill to emerge with significant political traction that the nonpartisan CBO has judged won't add to the deficit (other than the sadly neglected Wyden-Bennett bill, of course), thus fulfilling a major pledge Obama made in his speech. Before you jump down the CBO's throat, remember that this is the same agency that scored the Senate Health and House bills as costing well over $1 trillion, dealing them major blows.

What is the Senate Finance bill? It's basically what Obama outlined in his speech, minus the public option. It's got all the reforms to the insurance industry that end exclusions for people with pre-existing conditions and so forth. It has a mandate that all Americans buy insurance. It creates co-operatives so people without employer-sponsored insurance can band together and bargain for lower premiums from insurers. It gives subsidies to poor Americans so they can buy private insurance. I believe it'll have a handful of Republican ideas, such as the cost-controlling Medicare advisory committees and malpractice reform experiments. And in recent days, they've stripped out benefits for end-of-life counseling (ie "death panels") and hardened citizenship requirements for subsidies (thank Joe Wilson). (More complete summary here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/09/baucuss_framework_summary.html)

And, with the blessing now of the CBO, it's likely to pass, and the President will likely sign it. The CBO's report doesn't seem to have been made public yet; I assume it'll be released after the official unveiling of the Senate Finance bill on Wednesday.

Your thoughts?

Dr. DeMint's Sugar Pill, Part 2: Unfunded, inadequate and unambitious

Sunday's editorial adds practical criticisms to Saturday's conceptual critique of U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint's "Health Care Freedom Plan:"

As we explained Saturday, the most serious weakness of Sen. Jim DeMint's "Health Care Freedom Plan" is its lack of strong mechanisms to control out-of-control medical inflation. But within the plan itself, specific elements also have deficiencies of their own.

Screeching to a Halt

Tuesday's editorial decries hysterical timbre of both parties leaders in the health-care debate.

To listen to the loudest voices in the land, Democrats are socialist totalitarians who hate your babies and want to kill your grandma. Republicans, meanwhile, are terrorist guerrilas waging a desperate, slash-and-burn war to consolidate all health and wealth for straight white men.

Each side, to hear the other tell it, lacks any legitimate beliefs of its own, but is cynically exploiting health care and every other issue as part of a nefarious power grab.

Time ripe for health reform

Saturday's editorial considers some of the health-care reforms gaining the most traction in Congress.

In contrast to the adversarial atmosphere that dominated the health care debate of the 1990s, a new consensus is emerging that systematic reform is necessary, because rising costs now appear to threaten the country's long-term financial stability. Doing nothing, it seems, is no longer affordable.

We need to invest in our future, not just bet on it

Ripped from the wires ... Tom Friedman explains what went wrong with Wall Street and how we can fix it:

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Watching some financial stocks just get wiped out in recent months, I often hear a voice in the back of my head, and it is the same voice as one of those dealers in Las Vegas who coolly tells you as he sweeps up your chips after you've busted in blackjack: "Thank you for playing, ladies and gentlemen.''