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The President's proposal
The President's proposal is complex and lengthy, so I am only going to comment on a few points:
• Clearly, the proposal is focused on health insurance and access to pharmaceutical treatments. It has some provisions relating to Community Health Centers, which is a most welcome development. However, it does not appear that there is any major focus on prevention or on changing the health care reimbursement systems that have made health care unaffordable, which is very unfortunate.
• The President has eliminated provisions that appeared tailored to make deals with special interests. On the surface, this looks like a much more equitable plan.
• I am troubled by the exceptionally low individual mandate penalties and the elimination of the pre-existing condition requirement, because these provisions will cause individuals to pay the penalty and refrain from getting insurance unless they are already ill. This proposal, like its predecessors, poses a great risk of causing more sick people to get insurance, without balancing a sufficient number of healthy people to balance them out.
• The elimination of the Medicare "doughnut hole" is a good direction to the degree that it is targeted at drugs needed for the elderly to stay on chronic disease treatment plans. It would have been better if the elimination of the "doughnut hole" signaled what drugs we want to make sure the elderly take, as opposed to eliminating the doughnut hole under all conditions.
• The excise tax on "Cadillac plans" was directionally correct, but it needed to be refined, which I hope will happen through regulations.
• Price controls on insurance rates attack the symptom, rather than the root causes, of why insurance rates rapidly increase. We have declining health and misaligned health care payment systems. These are the problems that should have been addressed first.
By
Michael Critelli
|
February 22, 2010; 8:02 PM ET
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Posted by: easttxisfreaky | February 24, 2010 7:49 PM
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I wish for more commentary such as above (Critelli's) and less of: "the answer is still no." which shows lack of vision or "the people have spoken." which demonstrate lack of leadership and opportunism. None of which answers the fundamental question of fixing health care. For those who say it is not broken they remind me of a driver who sees the low gas light on and sails past the interstate exit with no idea how far it is to the next exit.
Posted by: tone2 | February 24, 2010 4:10 PM
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or handing out free medical care to anyone who has the audacity to enter our country illegally...