Good News – Vanessa Peters
Good news, everyone! Here’s some awesome news about the state of health care reform.
Judd Gregg is coming to the rescue. Yes, you remember Judd Gregg, who agreed to be Commerce Secretary until he realized that Obama was…wait for it…a Democrat. Well he’s back now, and all excited to help us put together a brand NEW health care bill that will get tons of Republican support and help lots of Americans oh wait, no, it’ll drag out negotiations and then receive zero Republican votes despite massively curtailing the beneficial parts of the bill.
I will remind House Democrats once again that they ALREADY have a health care bill. If 218 of them decide to just vote for the damn thing it’ll be on Obama’s desk the next day and within a few years will be not only uncontroversial but will actually be popular and well-supported. And if they do that, you can bet your bottom dollar that the Senate will feel obliged to use reconciliation to patch up the mess they made of their bill.
What else? Anthem Blue Cross is raising premium rates dramatically for some of their clients! Why are they doing this? Because healthy people are abandoning their insurance and crossing their fingers. Which means that the insurance pool is increasingly occupied by sick people who take out more than they put in. Result: higher rates for some! No insurance at all for others!
As Kevin Drum says, it’s a pretty strong demonstration of the need for a mandate:
Basically, any system that doesn’t rely on pools of customers (the entire country, an entire age cohort, an entire union, an entire company, etc.) runs the risk that healthy people will opt out, driving prices up for everyone else in an endless spiral. They’ll eventually opt back in, of course, but only when they get sick — and this is, needless to say, not a sustainable business model.
So, yeah, pass the damn bill already.
Yet another reason I graduated at the wrong time: if I were still at Dartmouth, I could legally vote against that moron.
Nope. He's retiring. Which means he's free to act as he really wants and doesn't have to be bound by the strict lines of war established by the oh wait that's not true either.