Healthcare Reform DOA

First, I would like to note that I voted for President Obama and firmly believe that US healt hcare reform needs a major overhaul. At this point, I am forced to conclude that the current health care reform is a complete failure and should not be passed.

The current legislation does nothing to reduce costs and it appears that health care providers are raising costs more than they would have otherwise. It is likely that if the legislation currently passed in the House and Senate passes that the reform will cause more harm than good.

The cost of the proposed reforms in both the House and the Senate are intentionally and significantly understated. The CBO has scored both plans for the 10 years following passage and the CBO actually shows a savings for the Senate plan. However, both plans include 10 years of income and 6 or 7 years of expense in that premium subsidies don't start until 2013 or 2014 for the House and Senate plans, respectively. The cost projections are a financial gimmick intended to sway the general public. Medicare currently faces a financial shortfall and I agree that Medicare reform is necessary to keep the current Medicare system operational. However, any savings in Medicare should be used to shore up Medicare's finances rather than to fund general health care reform. Using Medicare savings to fund the current reform is a bit like a shell game in that additional funds, probably from the government, will be needed to shore up Medicare at some point in the near future.

The mandatory insurance for individuals which will result in 94% of the population being covered by health insurance falls well short of the mark. 6% of the population still equates to over 20 million people who will remain uninsured will still result in significant cost shifts to those who do have insurance.

The process for developing the reform was severely flawed. The administration proudly claims that they have entered into an agreement with the drug makers who will contribute $80b (recent discussions indicate that this amount might increase to $140b) over 10 years to the reform effort. Given that the drug makers have US revenues of about $320b per year and it is likely that the drug makers will just increase costs to makeup for the reduced costs to Medicare recipients, this agreement may actually make costs higher for non-Medicare recipients. Much the same situation exists with the hospitals.

The current proposals for reform should be discarded and congress should start from scratch.