Could Pelosi’s plan improve health care?

WE SAY Better no bill than Pelosi’s health care reforms.

Jarrod Lowery is a freshman majoring in economics.

During the Bush administration, opponents of the former president’s most controversial anti-terrorism policies often reminded their fellow Americans of Benjamin Franklin’s admonition that “those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Strangely, many of those same people – mostly liberal Democrats – are now rallying around a health insurance reform bill that is designed to provide increased financial and health-related security to Americans while curtailing financial and health-related freedom in important ways.

Nevertheless, I don’t intend to dwell on the moral problems with this kind of bill, partly because I addressed them in my column (“Missing the point,” Sept. 30) and partly because other important flaws with the proposal bear discussing.

Foremost among these other flaws is the fact that the bill doesn’t even live up to two of its own professed objectives of being “deficit-neutral” nor improving “choice and competition.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, “[the bill] ‘pays’ for about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years.” In other words, it’s deficit-neutral if you ignore the liabilities side of the ledger for its seventh through 10th years.

Also the new Health Choices Commission the bill creates would have vast authority over any plan that wished to compete in “the Exchange,” which will result in a dramatic decrease in “choice and competition.”

This is because the Health Choices Commission will have the authority to determine not only the benefits packages of those plans that decide to participate in the Exchange but also those that opt not to. It will also have the power to review any changes insurers in the Exchange wish to make to their prices or marketing practices.

In addition, the bill, as opponents of a public option have long warned, lays the groundwork for the future expansion of the program into a full-fledged entitlement in league with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in terms of ballooning costs and bloated bureaucracy. This is evident because the vast powers the bill gives the new Health Choices Commissioner to regulate plans both inside and outside the Exchange will be so great that the rules it makes will eventually be so costly to follow that only the plan backed by the full faith and credit (and negotiating power) of the U.S. government (the public option) will be able to compete.



WE SAY The bill offers what we need: more coverage.

Ashley Ames is a senior majoring in history and interdepartmental political science and philosophy.

In 1961 when Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the nation, he left Americans with a warning: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Eisenhower’s wise words reach beyond the issues of his day. In 2007, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens.”

The United States is the only wealthy developed nation that does not guarantee health care coverage for all its citizens. And most Americans want that guarantee; a CBS News/New York Times poll found that 64 percent think the government should guarantee coverage to all citizens. Moreover, this percentage has been stable for several years. 

The health care bill proposed by Nancy Pelosi, while not perfect, comes one step closer to providing universal coverage for Americans. The Congressional Budget Office has reported that the House bill would provide coverage to 36 million people. Moreover, the CBO also reported that the bill would reduce projected federal budget deficits by $104 billion during 10 years. Under the plan, coverage would be increased through an expansion of Medicaid, a state-federal insurance program for the poor and by helping moderate-income Americans with subsidies for purchasing coverage from private carriers or a new government-run plan.

At a price tag of around $1.05 trillion over 10 years, however, the cost of the plan might seem daunting. Dr. Robert Stone, an assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at the IU School of Medicine and the director of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, said that, “Politically, we haven’t shown the will for the cost controls we need.”

Nevertheless, it’s a step in the right direction. “The moral imperative,” Stone explained, “is that we must find a way to cover everyone. Every other democracy can do it. We’ve got to figure out how to do it.”

Offering coverage to more Americans is a matter of saving lives and increasing our standard of living. The House bill offers a feasible way to do this. We should stop focusing on what the medical-industrial complex is saying. It’s time to demand what citizens of every other industrialized democracy have: a government guarantee of coverage.