Max Baucus Returns, Part 6

As Max Baucus rolls out Baucuscare in the WSJ this morning, the pushback is already apparent from both the left and the right. The Republicans want nothing to do with it, but it's becoming increasingly problematic that the Baucus plan is going to be nothing more than a mandate for forcing millions of Americans to buy insurance.

A 2008 study by the Urban Institute found that more than 10 million young adults ages 19 to 26 lack health insurance coverage. For many of those people, health-care reform would offer the promise of relatively inexpensive individual policies, which do not exist in many states today.

The trade-off is that young people would no longer be permitted to bet on their good health: All the reform legislation before Congress would require individuals to buy at least minimal coverage.

Another bill will be introduced Wednesday by the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will offer in it a proposal to keep premiums manageable: a bare-bones catastrophic policy that would protect young people from financial calamity while providing basic preventive care.

Drafting young adults into any health-care reform package is crucial to paying for it. As low-cost additions to insurance pools, young adults would help dilute the expense of covering older, sicker people. Depending on how Congress requires insurers to price their policies, this group could even wind up paying disproportionately hefty premiums -- effectively subsidizing coverage for their parents.

An array of Democratic senators continued to complain Tuesday about the affordability of reform, insisting that the final package should include much larger tax credits to help people cover the cost of insurance premiums.

"I want to make clear that in its current form I cannot put my support behind the Finance bill -- it will not have my vote," said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

In part, young adults are uninsured because they are less likely to work for employers who offer coverage; they may not qualify for public programs such as Medicaid; and even the skimpiest private insurance plans may be too expensive alongside hefty student loan payments and credit card debt.

But some young people -- nicknamed the "young invincibles" -- are also likelier than other Americans to assume that they won't need health insurance or to decide that they'd rather spend their money on other things.

To discourage that attitude, the Finance Committee bill would fine individuals who do not purchase coverage. An early draft of the proposal set the penalty at $750 or $950 per year for single people, depending on income. But according to various insurance experts, even the least expensive plan under the bill could cost more than $100 per month, making it cheaper for people to pay the fine than to buy insurance.

The problem is not that the penalty is too onerous. The problem is that this plan does nothing to make insurance more affordable for anyone, period, and I mean nothing. Folks who get sick under these catastrophe plans are still massively underinsured. If the Dems are really going to send billions to the insurance company's coffers and offer the same underinsured nightmare "barely legal" coverage as exists now, the Dems are going to get ravaged in 2010 and 2012 and rightfully so.

A bad plan is worse than no plan, and right now Baucuscare is that bad plan.