The Wall Street Journal has a splashy piece this evening on the White House's plan B for health-care reform: a fallback approach that would cover 15 million people, do less to reform the system and cut costs, and carry a lower price tag. Call it health-care lite.Ezra has a point. This plan B is basically the scaled-down Republican plan with some changes, it's been around for six months, and it's being pulled out in advance of today's health care summit in order to try to give the GOP another talking point to try to kill HCR slowly. It's being done to weaken Obama's position and I fully expect the GOP to flog this Plan B all day.
Plan B has been around for awhile. In August, discussions raged in the White House over whether to pare back the bill. The comprehensive folks won the argument, but people also drew up plans for how you could pare back the bill, if it came to that. More thinking was done on this in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election, when Rahm Emanuel and some of the political folks again argued for retreating to a more modest bill. As you'd expect, these conversations included proposals for how that smaller bill would look.
At this point, I could quote some White House sources swearing up and down that that's all this is. A vestigial document that's being blown out of proportion by a conservative paper interested in an agenda-setting story. They're furious over this story. None of the quotes are sourced to the White House -- not even anonymously -- raising questions that the whole thing is sabotage. But it hardly matters. There's no Plan B at this point in the game, and most everyone knows it.
It's a pretty good tag team from the "liberal" media and the GOP. We'll see how Obama can counter.
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3 comments:
Eh Plan B is going to be fail, from everything I've read about, it's going to help roughly 15 million get insurance but do nothing about the run away health care costs which is the real issue isn't it?
I just don't get why it would be so hard to try a few things such as
1. Medical Malpractice reform - If doctors aren't paying more for malpractice insurance they will in turn cut costs and will spend less time practicing defensive medicine which study after study has shown is dramatically increasing costs associated with health care.
2. Opening the markets - Some states like California for example REQUIRE insurance companies to provide certain items with every plan. Some of which are not needed by every individual. If the markets are open then someone from California can buy a bare bones plan from Oregon and save themselves money.
3. Tax breaks - Those who choose not to or cannot get employer sponsored health insurance generally pay 30-40% more for their plans than those who get employer sponsored health insurance. Why is that? Employers get a kick back from the Government. Why can't an individual get that as well? Give tax breaks to those who choose to go else where or are a contractor and don't have employer sponsored health insurance.
Medical Malpractice is a pitifully small piece of the overall health care cost picture. Kills that argument.
Opening the markets? California is one-seventh of the entire population of the country. They still get their rates jacked up. Kills that argument.
Tax breaks? Really? How will that increase coverage on those without it? Kills that argument too.
Funny how all three of these "reforms" are mainly designed to increase profits for insurance companies more than anything else.
Please. You're not even a competent GOP talking point troll.
Medical Malpractice - Apparently you fail to read or research (probably why you just piggy back on other liberal blogs opinions rather than taking a real news article and coming up with your own opinion. Really shows that you read and think for yourself), defensive medicine is increasing health care costs dramatically. Doctors are ordering more tests than are required to diagnose and individual because they are obviously afraid of being sued. Reduce the fear and guess what happens?
Opening the markets - Exactly, California had their rates jacked up, what if they didn't only have to shop in state? Dare I say what if they had other choices? I believe history has shown competition drives down costs and would also get some much needed change in a state that is going bankrupt.
Also reference an earlier comment showing profit margins for various industries and stop getting all worked up because a company makes profits. If it weren't for many of these big businesses that you want to ravage many people wouldn't have places of employment. Now do they all do the right thing all the time? Hell no, people will get screwed its an inevitable part of life. If you don't like it move somewhere like China or North Korea or even Cuba and enjoy. Keep this industry in the hands of the private market and make the changes. If they fail to work then you re-evaluate. You do not go from 0 to Obama gets a single payer system that the Government owns over night. Real change takes time, energy, effort and when you're changing something as massive as the health insurance industry you have to make small changes carefully as the ripple effect could be disastrous.
You effectively killed no argument and chose to do what most far left liberals do, claim to be open to ideas and suggestions but when they are presented you go to the same old talking points because the ideas and suggestions don't match up with your ideology.
See I can name call too :-) Now if you want to have a substantive debate we can, if you want to break down into name calling we can do that as well. I'll still get my point across to any free thinking person reading and belittle you.
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