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health care, Republican style
Mar. 1st, 2010 10:23 pmContinuing the amateur analysis started here of Republican health-care proposals...
There's a section entitled "Programs to reduce health insurance premiums and to reduce the number of uninsured". Sounds good; let's see how they do it. The answer is, they have no idea, but any state that manages to do it will get a monetary reward from the Federal government. More precisely, any state whose health insurance premiums decrease by a certain percentage from what they were in the year that the bill was enacted will get a specified amount, and any state whose number of "non-elderly uninsured" decreases by a certain percentage from what they were in the year that the bill was enacted will get a specified amount. Which cleverly guarantees that none of the reward money will go to Massachusetts, which enacted universal single-payer before this bill was proposed. It also means the national Republicans don't have to actually come up with solutions; they can take credit for decreeing that premiums and the number of uninsured Shall Shrink, and if most of the states don't find ways to do it, that's their own damn fault.
Now, I'm not saying that some states won't come up with good ideas that work well for them; there's potential in the "leave it to the States" approach. But if that's all you do, you can't really claim to be solving the problem.
There's a section entitled "Programs to reduce health insurance premiums and to reduce the number of uninsured". Sounds good; let's see how they do it. The answer is, they have no idea, but any state that manages to do it will get a monetary reward from the Federal government. More precisely, any state whose health insurance premiums decrease by a certain percentage from what they were in the year that the bill was enacted will get a specified amount, and any state whose number of "non-elderly uninsured" decreases by a certain percentage from what they were in the year that the bill was enacted will get a specified amount. Which cleverly guarantees that none of the reward money will go to Massachusetts, which enacted universal single-payer before this bill was proposed. It also means the national Republicans don't have to actually come up with solutions; they can take credit for decreeing that premiums and the number of uninsured Shall Shrink, and if most of the states don't find ways to do it, that's their own damn fault.
Now, I'm not saying that some states won't come up with good ideas that work well for them; there's potential in the "leave it to the States" approach. But if that's all you do, you can't really claim to be solving the problem.
