In response to Peggy Noonan’s claim that Obama should have simply tried to make insurance companies abandon their restrictions on patients with pre-existing conditions, Uwe E. Reinhardt explains why it’s not that simple:
She seems completely unaware that, to be implemented, that step has to be accompanied by (1) a mandate to be insured or, at the least, very powerful financial incentives to be insured. And if government imposes such a mandate on citizens, it must be ready (2) to subsidize low-income families in the acquisition of the mandated insurance. Already we have a bill requiring many pages.
To me, that’s a very helpful way of explaining to lay people like myself, who aren’t thrilled at the prospect of a massive insurance bill but don’t understand the nuances of the issue especially well, why such a bill is necessary even if your goals are relatively modest.
This then moves the debate to a different place, in my mind: if we are forced to go to great trouble and expense to get access to people with pre-existing conditions, is it worth it? If we decide it is, then it’s probably worth having the government involved. But Reinhardt’s point makes me more suspicious of Republican claims that we could just have the parts of the Health Care Reform Bill that everyone agrees on.
February 1, 2010 at 5:51 pm
I don’t think that Republicans will buy into a health care bill ever. Instead, they’ll just keep finding new things to disagree with and whine about. That way, they can make Democrats appear ineffective and incompetent when it comes to governing. Republicans can also then misrepresent the bill to make it unpopular among their constituents. The same thing happened with the stimulus bill, which, as even conservative economists have been forced to admit, has worked.
I think that the best way to pass health care reform passed quickly is for the House to pass the Senate bill or through reconciliation.