Democrats in House Botch Health Care Bill

Great Debates
1

Obama’s health care plan as outlined in the campaign and afterwards seemed to focus on two key points: i) improve the efficiency of health care by reducing costs; and ii) reduce the number of uninsured Americans by providing additional access through additional options. Obama Health Care Plan

In fact the main talking point was basically that his plan would guarantee affordable, accessible health care coverage for all Americans. It was stated over and over that inefficiency and rising costs were a huge part of the problem and that a hallmark of the plan was to reduce these costs and make health care more affordable for everyone.

Why then is the plan being offered by the Democrats in the House so fundamentally different?

Instead of paying for the plan by improving efficiency and reducing costs (as Obama called for) the plan instead just pays for it by increasing personal income taxes (> $280,000 income) and charging fees on businesses (> $250,000 in payroll) that don’t provide healthcare coverage.

Here are a few excerpts from an article that The Economist had criticizing the plan.

[Quote=The Economist]
On Tuesday July 14th Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, unveiled a grand strategy for health reform that is so far to the left of American political discourse that even moderate Democrats in the Senate (never mind the incensed and irrelevant House Republicans) held their noses.
[/Quote]

[Quote=The Economist]
Put simply, the House bill hopes to achieve near-universal health coverage by soaking the rich.
[/Quote]

[Quote=The Economist]
Rather than finance this large expansion of coverage through savings found within the health system, as Mr Obama had prudently requested, the Democratic party’s leadership plans to pay for it by imposing an ill-advised tax on business and a steep “surcharge” on the wealthy.
[/Quote]

[Quote=The Economist]
By embracing these two taxes, the House rejected the financing method recommended by most economists. The tax preference given to health insurance provided by employers (over, say, the coverage bought by the self-employed) is a market distortion that costs the exchequer some $250 billion a year. Abolishing or even merely restricting that policy could pay for much or all of the cost of universal coverage, as well as boosting labour mobility and making the cost of coverage more transparent to consumers. This virtuous policy never had a chance in the House, because union members get some of the best insurance packages.
[/Quote]

2

The short answer is that Obama hasn’t shown himself to be much of a leader - he prefers to let Congress do all of the work involved in these matters. And if that means that the Democratic leadership in Congress will freeze Republicans out of the process and give anything to wavering Democrats to keep them on board - well, they’ll do that and Obama won’t complain.

3

IOW:

“Taxing the rich is bad. Taxing workers’ health care benefits is good”. - The Economist (never mind that the latter has been widely shot down as a dumb idea, even by Obama).

“Obama sucks”. - Some partisan
And a response:
“What matters is that we do it, that we get universal, guaranteed coverage, not so much how we do it. No excuses, no whining, do it.” - Me

4

One of the problems with Obama’s plan is that no one knows how to extract the kind of savings that would be required to provide health care to 47 million more people without raising costs.

My personal opinion was that the ‘self-financing’ aspect of Obama’s health care reform was always a smokescreen, used to gain public acceptance of the plan. This is nothing new. The government is always claiming that its pet ideas are self-financing. The stimulus? Self-financing through a fiscal multiplier. Tax cuts? Self-financing through the Laffer Curve. Carbon taxes? Self-financing through the creation of ‘green jobs’.

Governments play this game because the benefits they offer are popular, and the costs of those benefits are not. So they pretend the costs don’t exist.

Unfortunately for them, once you start to get specific and actually formulate plans and try to work out budgets, the real costs emerge.

The House health care bill is a travesty, but not because it admits that someone has to actually pay for it.

5

A dumb idea or a politically unpopular idea? Why does the disparity in paying for healthcare individually (taxed dollars) versus employer paying it (untaxed) make sense? Doesn’t it hide the true cost of healthcare for the vast majority of Americans as stated in the article? Also, doesn’t it inhibit the mobility of America’s workforce?

I’m clueless as to where you are getting this from. Your reading comprehension skills must be extremely lacking. The criticism is of House Democrats, clearly not Obama.

And this would be exactly what I dislike about progressives. Unintended side effects don’t matter to you. Just see a problem and try to solve it without caring whether your solution may actually cause more problems. Do you even care if the attempted solution solves the problem or is the only thing that matters to you the attempt?

6

I don’t think Obama ever promised to insure an additional 47 million Americans. I thought he promised to make healthcare coverage accessible and affordable. He also proposed a mandate for coverage of children. Nothing in that seems to imply universal coverage to me.

7

One party’s ‘botch’ is another party’s ‘slam dunk’.
Should healthcare pass, the GOP won’t recover from the debacle for decades, if ever.

8

What is more interesting is that the bill is drawing opposition from progressives in Congress.

9

Both.

Progressivity. Or at least nonregressivity.

Post #2. :rolleyes:

Excuses, excuses …

10

Well, he did call for single-payer . . . but that was back in 2003.

11

Right. They’ve never truly recovered from opposing Social Security or Medicare, using arguments pretty much like what they’ve used against UHC or anything like it, either.

12

Dunno. If it’s truly botched then it is just as likely to play into the GOP’s court.

13

That’s right. Because we all know that the end justifies the means.

14

Wouldn’t it depend on if it’s successful or not? If all it does is increase taxes and reduce the quality of health care, I doubt it will be a huge coup for the Democrats. Also, would it be a victory for Obama since it is completely different from his proposal?

15

If it extends coverage to at least most who don’t have it, as the polls generally show the people want, that will be a coup.

No. It will have been on his watch, and the result of his pushing it over the top. But you can dream.

16

We all know that carping about what *might *happen along the way, and pretending that problems that do reveal themselves cannot and will not be addressed, is a convenient way to rationalize avoidance of doing a thing at all.

17

Our intrepid reader would do well to read Mr. Moto who said: "The short answer is that Obama hasn’t shown himself to be much of a leader - he prefers to let Congress do all of the work involved in these matters. And if that means that the Democratic leadership in Congress will freeze Republicans out of the process and give anything to wavering Democrats to keep them on board - well, they’ll do that and Obama won’t complain." (emphasis added)

18

I’m pretty sure it would still be progressive. In fact, I think it would be more progressive than the current system since now a poor person who doesn’t have health care coverage provided for them by their employer has to use taxed dollars.

19

Perhaps specifically directing the comment to the person it was intended for would have brought some clarity in what was being addressed.

20

Actually reading one’s own thread, and desisting from commenting about the “reading comprehension skills” of those who did, would have worked even better.

And better yet is to have more than “Here’s some hatchet-job story. Isn’t it just awful?” to start a thread with.