Health Care Special Interests Four Hundred Billion - Consumers Zero

That's the Congressional health care score card for December.

As the year winds down and must pass year-end spending bills are completed––and with that any chance of attaching and approving health care legislation––the special interests have won big and consumers have lost big.

Employers, unions, and insurance companies won big with the repeal of the "Cadillac" tax on high cost benefit plans at a cost of $200 billion over ten years as well as the repeal of the health insurance tax (HIT), and the 2.3% medical device tax sales tax.

The total cost for repealing just these things will add about $400 billion to the deficit over a decade and are part of a mammoth $1.4 trillion spending bill larded up for lots of different interests.

Buttigieg and Biden Spend What They Would Gain Repealing the Republican Tax Cuts on Health Care

Shouldn't any gain from repealing the Republican tax cuts on the wealthiest go toward fixing the debt and deficit problems these tax cuts have contributed to?

Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg both rely on repealing some of the Trump tax cuts––particularly those for the "rich"––to pay for their very similar and incremental health care plans that rely upon making a government-run public option available to consumers.

On one level that notion can be attractive to Democratic voters turned off by the 2017 Republican tax cuts.

But when those tax cuts were passed, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated those cuts would add $1.6 trillion over ten years to the deficit. The Democrats were apoplectic over the Republican irresponsibility of it all.

Greed Outranks Compromise in Congressional Attempts to Fix Surprise Medical Bills

There are few things in our health care system that are more unfair than surprise medical bills. Consumers think they have good coverage and are getting treatment in their health plan network only to get a huge unexpected bill in the mail because it turned out that something like the anesthesiologist at their recent surgery wasn't covered.

How were they to know that? As you're sitting on the gurney about to be rolled into surgery do you need to do a provider roll call asking each to confirm their network status?

The worst of these examples often has to be with air ambulances sending patients bills for tens of thousands of dollars they had no reason to expect. As the patient lays there with burns over 60% of their body and they need to be transferred to the regional burn center, are they supposed to say, "Before you put me on the helicopter, what is this going to cost?

Now, every politician I know of says that all of this needs to end.

But, they are yet to end it.

The Trump/Republican 2020 Health Care Plan

The Republicans don't yet have a health care plan less than a year before the 2020 elections.

But based upon their 2017 Obamacare repeal and replace efforts, as well as a major document recently issued by the House Republican Study Committee, what might a Republican plan look like?

Elizabeth Warren Backs Into the Public Option and Effectively Takes Medicare for All Off the Table for Democrats in 2021

Medicare for all is dead because Democratic voters aren't buying it.

Fixing Obamacare and adding a public option is the health care policy territory first staked out by Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Writing about Biden's plan recently on this blog, I said:

IF the Democrats capture the White House, keep the House, and take over the Senate, no matter who they elect as President, this Biden health care outline, not Medicare for all, will likely be the plan Democrats embrace in 2021.

Not even I thought Elizabeth Warren would act so quickly to move off her only days-old detailed Medicare for all plan and onto about the same place all of the leading Democratic candidates, save Bernie Sanders, sit on health care––just fixing Obamacare and adding a public option.