[Peace-discuss] Obama's bad health plan

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Is There Any Way Out for Obama?
	By Leonard Rodberg

Progressives worry that, if Obama's health reform plan (hereafter called the 
"Plan") fails to pass, a latter-day right-wing Gingrich movement will take over 
the Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. What I have not heard, but 
what I am increasingly coming to believe, is that, if the Plan passes in any of 
its current forms, things will go just as badly for him! Why is that?

The general reason is that the Plan is a DOG. It is a terrible, complex plan 
that will accomplish almost nothing. Relatively few people will benefit from it, 
while everyone who has to use health care will continue to experience the mess 
that is, and will continue to be, the American health care system. And, because 
of the new requirements built into the Plan, health care finance will become 
even more complex and confusing.

More specifically:

1. The large majority of people, who receive their insurance from their 
employer, will see no benefit whatsoever from the Plan. Most will, in fact, find 
their premiums rising as new requirements imposed by the Plan (e.g., the 
elimination of lifetime limits) raise the cost of insurance. And, of course, to 
their undoubted surprise, most of them will not have access to the public 
option, even if there is one.

2. Most provisions of the Plan will not become effective until 2013. This gives 
four years for Republicans to criticize the Plan, including (1) its use of cuts 
in Medicare reimbursements and Medicare Advantage premiums as principal sources 
of funding, (2) its lack of any real or believable mechanism for containing 
costs, and (3) its bureaucratic complexity.

3. The taxes on high-cost insurance plans, the other principal source of 
funding, will cause those who now have good insurance (called, pejoratively, 
"Cadillac" plans) to find these plans heavily taxed and their employers given a 
strong incentive to cut back on their benefits. Instead of reducing 
underinsurance, this part of the Plan will increase it! (And the rest of the 
plan does little about underinsurance at all.)

4. During the four years of waiting for the Plan to take effect, costs will 
continue to rise. By the time the Plan takes effect, costs are likely to be at 
least 25% greater than now. Even more people will find insurance and health care 
unaffordable. People will ask "What was health reform about?" The 
disillusionment will be great.

5. The complexity of the plan, including (1) federal rules regarding what kinds 
of employer-based insurance plans are "qualified," (2) new income tax forms that 
will be needed to implement the individual mandate, and (3) the process of 
determining income eligibility for everyone, will all lend themselves to 
criticism and even ridicule.

Is there a way out? Not, in my view, as long as Obama sticks with this worthless 
and unworkable Plan. Only if we were to adopt a much simpler plan that would 
benefit everyone -- a Medicare for All plan -- would he be seen as actually 
addressing the problem and really offering a workable solution. Short of that, 
he, and all of us, are in real trouble.

(Leonard Rodberg, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair, Urban Studies Department, Queens 
College/CUNY.)