Passing the Democratic Health Care Bill is Not the “Right Thing To Do”

Any big health care bill will be full of compromises—political or otherwise. But this bill doesn’t even come close to deserving to be called “health care reform.”

As the Democrats make their final push to pass their health care bill many of them, and most notably the President, are arguing that it should be passed because it is the “right thing to do whatever the polls say.”

Their argument is powerful: We will never get the perfect bill. If this fails who knows how long it will be before we have another big proposal up for a vote. There are millions of uninsured unable to get coverage because of preexisting conditions or the inability to pay the big premiums and this bill would help them.

But as an unavoidable moral imperative, enacting this bill would fall way short:

• It is unsustainable. Promises are being made that cannot be kept. As the President has said many times, we need fundamental health care system reform or the promises we have already made—the Medicare and Medicaid entitlements, for example—will bankrupt us. What few cost containment elements the Democrats seriously considered are now either gone from their final bill or hopelessly watered down—most notably the “Cadillac” tax on high cost benefits and the Medicare cost containment commission.

• It is paying off the people already profiting the most from the status quo. Many of the big special interests, that will have to change their ways if we are really going to improve the system, are simply being paid off for their support. The drug deal, the hospital deal, promises not to cut or change the way physicians are paid, all add up to more guaranteeing the status quo rather than doing anything that will bring about the systemic change everyone knows is needed.
  

• Nothing in these bills will fundamentally change our current fiscal course. As the CBO, and every other expert has said, if this bill becomes law we will continue on the same cost trajectory we are already on. Yes, the CBO says the Democratic plan will reduce costs during the next ten years by about $100 billion—but that only means they would be $100 billion less than the $35 trillion they would have been anyway! That is merely a rounding error on the track we are already on.
  

• There is nothing here that will stop unaffordable health insurance rate increases. Lately supporters have said this bill is the solution to the recent big individual health insurance rate increases we have been reading about in the press. But there is little in this bill that will mitigate or control any such increases because so little would be done to impact underlying health care costs.

We often hear the argument, “Let’s get this entitlement expansion bill passed and it will force us to deal with costs later.” If we don’t now have the political courage to face daunting health care costs in the face of exploding deficits how will we have that courage later?

I will suggest that adding 30 million more people to an unsustainable system expecting it will create an even bigger crisis and thereby force real reform is tantamount to reboarding the Titanic in the hopes it will sink faster. It is also hard to see how doing such a thing is the politically courageous thing to do.

Just where is the moral imperative in ramming a trillion dollar entitlement expansion through knowing full well it will make our long-term deficit nightmare even worse—for those now uninsured and for everyone else?

The Democratic health care bill makes little if any systemic changes to the health care system—certainly not at the level we need.

The Democratic health care bill makes promises we cannot keep.

Proponents of the Democratic health care bill make the claim that it will make health insurance affordable, improve our deficit outlook, and make our health insurance system sustainable. None of those claims are even close to being true and everyone who knows anything about this debate knows that.

Heck of a foundation for doing the “right thing.”