The Pretend Presidential Debate on Health Care--The Health Care Press Needs to Force the Presidential Candidates to Get Real on Health Care "Change"

Let's pretend that either Senator Obama or Senator McCain will be able to implement their respective health care reform plans if elected. Should be easy--we've been doing it for months now.

Or, we can get real and expect them to do the same.

For all the arguments both are making that they are change agents, including over the candidates' competing health care reform proposals, is this dirty little secret––neither Senator's health care plan has a chance of being implemented.

Senator McCain is not going to get a likely Democratic Congress to pass a health care reform plan that eliminates the deductibility of employer-based health insurance and pushes millions of consumers into a wide-open and less regulated insurance market.

Maybe the Congress should pass it--but they won't.

If Obama is elected he will not get even a Democratic Congress to pass his health care plan which will cost at least $100 billion a year. The 2009 deficit is now projected to be in the $500 billion range--and that is before the huge cost in 2009 to extend the Bush tax cuts even Obama favors and the cost of the Freddie and Fannie bailout.

Maybe the Congress should pass Obama's health care reform plan in the face of these overwhelming fiscal realities--but they won't.

So this presidential debate over "my health plan versus your health plan" is interesting but it's actually pretty irrelevant.

The real question that needs to be put to these candidates: Just how will you achieve bipartisan health care reform in the face of the reality of needing to deal with a Democratic Congress (McCain) and a crippling budget challenge (Obama)?

Bipartisanship means reaching out to get enough of the other guys onside. Political leadership means finding the place a deal can be made. So, just how would these candidates get the job done?

Let me suggest that it is more important for voters to hear from these candidates about how they will handle the real world of health care reform rather then the pretend one they seem to be debating.

Let me give you a for-instance.

There is one bipartisan health care reform plan that takes from both sides and the CBO says is cost neutral. It has 16 Senate sponsors--8 Republicans and 8 Democrats.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) have crafted a health care reform plan that gives both sides the most important things each are looking for:

• For the Republicans, it gives them a plan that moves away from the third-party employer-based payment system to one of individual responsibility and the promise of a more vibrant market.
• For the Democrats, it provides a plan that assures everyone will have access to coverage and provides the financing to get about everyone covered in the short-term.

But here's the big one: The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation have said the Wyden-Bennett plan could be operational by 2012 and would be budget neutral by 2014! In health care terms, parting the Red Sea would be an easier accomplishment.

I'd ask McCain and Obama just how they would accomplish health care reform--in the real world not in the pretend one they are in now. I'd go further and ask each of them if he would sign the Wyden-Bennett plan if it came to his desk.

If I had the answers to these questions then I would really know something about just how they would be "change" agents and accomplish health care reform!

Update on the financial crisis and health care reform: What I'm Telling the Health Care Business About the Future

Earlier post:
Watch the Wyden-Bennett "Healthy Americans Act"--It Could Be the Place Health Care Reform Compromise Takes Place in 2009