Health Care Links

Ezra Klein says Chuck Schumer’s compromise public option plan, created in concert with Max Baucus, separates the insurance industry’s main arguments that (a) the public option will be worse for you and will take away your freedom of choice by preventing the insurance companies from competing with it and (b) the public option will compete unfairly with the insurance industry, threatening their profits.

(Note: The public plan is NOT single payer, which has been excluded thus far from the discussions in the Senate Finance Committee, as noted previously.)

Klein also reports that Chuck Schumer forced the Senate Finance Committee roundtable to address the public plan, which he defended bluntly.

Matthew Yglesias foresees Congress killing health care reform by expressing support for it publicly while opposing every reasonable way of paying for it. I worry about the same thing, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that I keep blogging about the issue. Psychohistorians take note. ;-)

He also relates that the GOP claims that Obama isn’t doing enough to compromise, but refuses (surprise) to offer anything of their own, in this case in re health care reform. I know—I was so shocked I had to sit down. ;-)

Moving from politics to policy: Since there is NO correlation between levels of health care spending and levels of improvement in public health in the U.S., Yglesias argues we should focus not on setting a specific level of spending, but on health care outcomes, in terms of increased efforts at prevention and “lifestyle issues.”