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House Republicans produce laughable health care "reform" bill
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Ridiculous... (AP photo)
We already knew that Congressional Republicans were unwilling to adopt any Democratic attempt at health care reform. A new Republican alternate bill, though, seems to show, amongst other things, that they don't even realize why the effort is being undertaken.
The Republican "alternate bill" has ignored nearly every issue with which reform is intended to deal. Easier access to health insurance? The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would extend access to a whopping 3 million more nonelderly residents by 2019 while leaving 52 million of the nonelderly without any health insurance. When expected population increases are taken into account the effect is basically nothing. An end to denial of coverage or exorbitant premiums for people with preexisting conditions? Nothing again. In fact, people with health issues who are covered may actually see their premiums go up if this legislative farce were somehow passed. Considering that overwhelming premiums are already a tool used by insurance companies to passively deny coverage to Americans with preexisting conditions, this may actually exacerbate the problem.
So, what exactly does the bill seek to accomplish? One thing is tort reform, an issue that Republicans have tacked on to the health care debate. According to the CBO, this measure would save us only $11 billion over the next year and only $41 billion over the next decade. This has not stopped Republicans from positing this measure at the forefront of their version of "reform", claiming ridiculous savings ranging from 50 billion to hundreds of billions of dollars. These figures are based on the results of a Stanford study that only dealt with cardiac patients. Conservatives have extrapolated the results of this study to reflect the entirety of our health care system even though separate studies have shown that caps on malpractice torts would have little effect on other areas of medicine. This is a blatant, and likely intentional, misrepresentation of facts, considering that it would be an incredibly basic error. Those who produced these calculations should, and almost certainly do, know better.
The other key benefit of this Republican "legislation" involves further deregulation of the insurance industry. (That is not a typo.) Through such measures as lowering current minimum coverage standards for insurance plans, Republicans are able to provide the true fruit of their "comprehensive health reform", which is...a marginal decrease in premiums for people who already have health insurance! (That is only an average. As I've mentioned, some people, especially those most vulnerable, would face the possibility of an increase in their payments.) Here the Republicans have identified the true problem with our system. Our insurance plans are just too damn good. By allowing insurance companies to make some of them less comprehensive, we can pay less for them These overall savings are the primary driver behind the $68 billion by which the CBO estimates this plan would reduce federal deficits over the next decade.
It is this last figure that Republicans cite as evidence that they have crafted a plan superior to the current Democratic House bill. This may be the most ridiculous thing I have heard since the last time Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn) opened her mouth. (All too frequent.) Basically, they have crafted a health care reform bill that saves money by not reforming health care. What this shows about the Republican viewpoint on health care is very troubling. Instead of seeing this as an effort to enact policy that will save lives, they have simply set about making numbers match up on a piece of paper and claimed it as success. The only beneficiaries of this plan are insurance companies and those who already have health care. More troubling is the fact that many have also seen it as a tremendous opportunity to ruin President Obama in an effort to restore conservatives to power. Surely the lives of a few poor, disproportionately non-white, people are a worthy sacrifice.
However, conservatives may have misplayed their hand. By releasing a "bill" that is unable to accomplish any of the key goals of health care reform, they have effectively conceded that they have no way of doing so that is better than the current House bill. In fact, the House bill provides comprehensive reform, extending coverage to 96% of nonelderly residents, while actually reducing the deficit by $129 billion over the next decade and resulting in "slight reductions" in the deficit during the decade after that, according to CBO estimates. Compare this to the $68 billion we would save via the Republican faux-legislation. In the end, the Republican proposal is nonsense. It is nothing more than a further elaboration on the unofficial party platform, "No!"
Update: Every fact used in this article comes directly from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The explanation for the difference between the CBO figure on tort reform and conservative estimates can be found on the non-partisan fact checking site FactCheck.org. Links to both are in the article.
