According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill “will result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $81 billion between 2010 and 2019 and “reduce the federal budgetary commitment to health care.” But the positive score isn’t winning converts.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., suggested the Democrats should “start over” on health care reform. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., dismissed the score, declaring, “This partisan Finance Committee proposal will never see the Senate floor.”
The Baucus bill requires substantial changes, but the Republican effort to invalidate it is disingenuous. It’s hard to argue for bipartisan deficit-neutral health care reform and oppose a measure that incorporates pages of Republican ideas and actually reduces the deficit. To make that argument, one must pretend that the Baucus bill is something it’s not.
The bill is still far from perfect. The coverage provisions are “significantly lower than the projections from the House bill.”
The committee should invest in higher affordability credits or improve affordability measures by allowing the exchanges to “negotiate with plans for lower bids, encourage plans to form select networks, and exclude plans that do not offer good value and cost-effectiveness.”
Congress should replace the proposed network of co-operatives — which, according to the CBO, are “unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payment” — with a robust public option that could save the government as much as $150 billion over 10 years.
It should eliminate the “failsafe” clause that “automatically” cut subsidies in the exchange to avert a projected increase in spending, strengthen employer-based coverage by replacing the bill’s free-rider provision with a pay-or-play employer mandate, and improve consumer protections by regulating the insurance plans of large self-insured corporations and lowering the amount insurers can charge older people for coverage.
The Baucus bill provides Congress with an important opportunity to build up and incorporate many progressive criticisms into the final Senate bill. After all, Republicans have continuously demonstrated that they will paint even the most conservative health bill as an expensive government takeover.
Igor Volsky is a healthcare researcher at the Center for American Progress and the co-author of the book, “Howard Dean’s Prescription For Real Health Care Reform.”
