Baucus Plan Offers More Problems Than Solutions
The sweeping health reform plan proposed today by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus suffers from several expensive and fatal flaws. Baucus’ plan would destroy any choices that consumers have to select health coverage that meets their individual needs. If enacted, every American would be stuck with a government-designed and regulated health plan that will drive up costs and limit access for too many consumers.
Sen. Baucus’ plan also would expand Medicaid and SCHIP for low-income families and expand Medicare — allowing individuals aged 55-64 to enroll. Research has found that such an expansion in coverage would result in families dropping their private coverage to enroll in public coverage – putting a bigger burden on taxpayers.
In addition, whenever these types of regulations are imposed at the state level, premiums have jumped two to three times the national average. Mandated coverage would force consumers to buy plans with benefits they may not want at prices they cannot afford.
The Baucus plan includes many of the same elements implemented in the Massachusetts mandated health plan, which is now suffering from massive cost overruns for the state and escalating premium costs for consumers. Many newly insured patients have been unable to find doctors willing to treat them under the new reimbursement levels.
The solution is portable coverage that moves with workers from job to job, and that allows families to choose the level of benefits they need at a cost they can afford. To curb costs and improve quality, we must provide patients more control over how they spend their health care dollars.
The good news about the Baucus plan is that Congress is discussing solutions to the health care crisis. However, it’s critical that we move forward with a solution that really works.
The Bauucas plan is not that much different from the Obama plan. It has all the same problems and essentially the same cost (between $1 trillion and $6 trillion over ten years) and no revenue source.
This would be added to an unfunded liability in Social Security and Medicare of $100 trillion plus(according to the Trustees) and an untold liability in Medicaid as well.
Baucus and his accomplices are provin once again that they are unable to learn from experience. What’s the definition of insanity?
Catron, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and each time expecting a different result. Off the chart insanity is telling the Congressional Budget Office how to score the proposal.
Baucas says there is no real cost here. It´s all an investment.
Greg, Baucus is misspelled in your note above. It ends with `us`, not `as` and there is only one `s`. Must have been a Freudian slip.
“It´s all an investment.”
What scares me is that many people actually take this kind of BS seriously.
Nothing new here, I agree. Pretty much reads like it was taken off a Commonwealth Fund white paper. It repeats a lot of the old half truths: the number of un-insured neglects the voluntary uninsured, those who qualify for government plans but don’t apply and illegal immigrants who aren’t eligible. The idea that having people get pep talks about lifestyle changes will make a difference in the incidence of chronic disease is laughable. What does he think the HMOs of the 70s and 8os tried to do? It was all about prevention back then, and didn’t work any better than this plan will. What did Obama say about putting lipstick on a pig?
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