Let’s all take a deep breath, and consider just how much good this bill would do, if passed — and how much better it would be than anything that seemed possible just a few years ago. With all its flaws, the Senate health bill would be the biggest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare, greatly improving the lives of millions. Getting this bill would be much, much better than watching health care reform fail.
Well, that's a matter of perspective. The progressive view is that what the Senate has produced doesn't amount to genuine reform. Instead, it's a reluctant nod to decency while killing progress and reform -- possibly for another generation. It mandates investing in a costly product while guaranteeing profitability for providers of that product but not the quality of the product. It puts profit before public good.
At its core, the bill would do two things. First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance.
All of this would be paid for in large part with the first serious effort ever to rein in rising health care costs.
The result would be a huge increase in the availability and affordability of health insurance, with more than 30 million Americans gaining coverage, and premiums for lower-income and lower-middle-income Americans falling dramatically...
... America would be in much better shape today if Democrats had cut a deal on health care with Richard Nixon, or if Bill Clinton had cut a deal with moderate Republicans back when they still existed. ...Paul Krugman, NYT
Or stick with Howard Dean who thinks (with the data and background to strengthen his argument) that it's a bad bill, a sham.
Whatever the outcome, Paul Krugman's final point is a very good one.
On the other side of the op-ed page, David Brooks offers pro and con arguments. The pro arguments focus on what failure to pass the bill would mean -- for the federal budget, for all of us, for Obama, for the future of health reform. The con arguments are many. The most persuasive is this:We need to take on the way the Senate works. The filibuster, and the need for 60 votes to end debate, aren’t in the Constitution. They’re a Senate tradition, and that same tradition said that the threat of filibusters should be used sparingly. Well, Republicans have already trashed the second part of the tradition: look at a list of cloture motions over time, and you’ll see that since the G.O.P. lost control of Congress it has pursued obstructionism on a literally unprecedented scale. So it’s time to revise the rules.
The current system is rotten to the bone with opaque pricing and insane incentives. Consumers are insulated from the costs of their decisions and providers are punished for efficiency. Burkean gradualism is fine if you’ve got a cold. But if you’ve got cancer, you want surgery, not nasal spray.
