Baucus Health Care Plan Still A Loser
Nov 17th, 2008 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: Politics & PolicyAmong the many crises awaiting Barack Obama after January 20, 2009 is the issue of health care. In an effort to be helpful (or pushy, depending on your perspective), Senator Max Baucus has released a 98-page white paper outlining a comprehensive and ambitious plan to cover everybody, reduce costs, increase efficiency, reward good health care outcomes and improve the competitive position of U.S. firms in the global economy.
There’s a lot here that is worth preserving, things like focusing on preventive care and expunging the waste, fraud and abuse that increase overall costs. However, this plan is much the same as all the others. The fundamental inefficiency of our system is that we spend our time trying to figure out how to pay for health insurance when what we all really need is health care. Along the same lines, the individual insurance mandate is a bad idea. Such a mandate may well force a family that had its medical care expenses well under control to suddenly find themselves struggling with much more costly premiums instead. In the end, this stuff could make health care less affordable for some individuals and businesses, regardless of what it does to premium costs.
