Legal Commentary

Health Insurance Premium Assistance Is Not Reform

By Big Tent Democrat

While starting with the now to be expected insulting Very Serious Person approach, what interested me about this Ron Brownstein post was this:

In his Washington Post op-ed Thursday, Dean wrote: "I know health care reform when I see it, and there isn't much left in the Senate bill." Yet the bill that Dean so casually dismisses would spend, according to the Congressional Budget Office, nearly $200 billion annually once it is fully phased in to help subsidize insurance coverage for over 30 million Americans now without it. That's real money--the most ambitious and generous expansion of the public safety net since the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson. And that money, based on the Census results, would flow most into minority and working-class white communities.

(Emphasis supplied.) Certainly expanding health insurance premium assistance for the less well off is a very good thing, but no one can seriously argue it is reform. Oh btw, 200 billion dollars annually? Where'd that number come from? And what Congress is going to approve it? I'd like to hear more about that number. Finally, health insurance premium assistance can be done via reconciliation, as Dean has called for. So the Senate bill is really not critical to what Brownstein is arguing is the key provision of "health care reform." The more they write, the more nonsensical the Very Serious People are becoming.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 18, 2009 (boomark / email).