CBO says health care bill costs $829B over decade

Not my favorite bill either, not by a long shot, but it does seem to be an improvement nonetheless over the current situation.

barfo

 

The international Markets already know what we look like.

 

Because bacon and soda taste good, like a cigarette should.

barfo

 

First, a disclaimer: I have not read the Baucus bill itself.

Co-ops and exchanges: this is good, although a little clunky in design, it will allow people to buy insurance at a reasonable rate when their employer doesn't provide coverage. I like that there will be multiple plans available, and that those plans will have various defined minimum coverage levels. I like that there is a cheap high-deductable plan for the under-25 crowd.

Making pre-existing conditions go away is a good thing. The higher rate for tobacco smokers, while a bit heavy-handed, is nevertheless useful social engineering. Requiring people to have insurance is a good thing in my book (although I'm not at all crazy about the particular implementation here).

I'd have been in favor of more sweeping changes, but of course that's not really realistic for our system of government. This is a decent set of incremental changes.

barfo

 

You are off somewhat, anyway:

You say 9 million more covered; CBO says 29 million more.

barfo

 

That number is for 2019, not today. I assume it is a projection of what the situation would be then if there are no changes to the current scheme, although I haven't read the document carefully enough to verify that.

barfo

 

The choice of headline on the linked news story (and this thread) is interesting. Here's another choice for a headline about the same report:

Health-Care Bill Wouldn't Raise Deficit, Report Says

They sort of give two different impressions, don't they?

The report actually says that the bill would reduce the deficit.

barfo

 

That's basically correct. There are several pieces to the revenue & cost reduction side that together offset the spending. I would think overall spending would be going up, since we'll be covering more people, and also having some new mandates like not being able to exclude those with pre-existing conditions, which will presumably raise the cost. The CBO says it aint their damn job to compute national healthcare expenditures, however, so the answer to that question isn't provided here.

barfo