Lawmakers Warned About Health Costs
CBO Chief Says Democrats’ Proposals Lack Necessary Controls on Spending
via Budget Analyst Assails Cost of Congress’s Health-Care Proposals – washingtonpost.com.
Look, the current situation in US health care simply isn’t sustainable. Obama campaigned against repealing the exemption on employer health benefits. It’s a huge subsidy to the fraying patchwork of employer based health insurance. He’s the quandry:
- We can’t control the rate of increase in health expenditures.
- The money required to do real reform required to control costs and cover all Americans is tied up in a tax subsidy for employer based coverage.
- Congress doesn’t want to find new revenue sources.
- The health insurance tax subsidy is beginning to look like another sacred cow.
- Entrenched interests aren’t interested in really controlling costs. One man’s wasteful health spending is another man’s bread and butter.
It begins to look like the chances for any real reform are fading in Congress. If Obama pivots on the employer health insurance subsidy, the attack ads write themselves and will target any Congress-critters who show support. Maybe he’ll get some kind of expansion of coverage without effective cost controls, which really will be the worst of both worlds in that they will be expensive and do nothing to reign in the rate of increase in Medicare and Medicaid spending. Without systemic change that can move the cost curve it will be budget buster.
At the end of the day I think Obama is too cautious to really throw his weight behind reform. If he’s not going to lead it will fail. Maybe will get some marginal changes that improve coverage, but cost control will lag creating a huge problem in a few budget cycles. Much of the complaining from the right about deficits is so very, very disingenuous. They created structural deficits to give tax breaks to the wealthy and to pay for ill-considered foreign wars at the same time. That point should be driven home and wrapped around them like a hair shirt whenever they complain about deficits.
