Healthcare Plan

November 18 - Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who last week released his own proposal for comprehensive reform of the U.S. health care system, expressed doubt that his proposal could adhere to pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budget rules.  PAYGO rules, which are designed to prevent increases in the federal deficit, require that any new spending or tax cuts be offset by other tax increases or spending cuts over either a five or ten-year period.  Since the most recent PAYGO rules were adopted in 2007, Congress has waived the provision several times.  The article quotes Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition, on these developments:

"If they want to waive PAYGO for health care, [Democrats] are going to have to come up with a rationale for why the resulting deficits aren't as bad as the deficits from Bush's tax cuts," Bixby said. "People are going to argue it's better to have health care coverage than to have tax cuts for upper-income people. That's a legitimate political debate. But if ‘x' amount of deficit is economically ruinous, it doesn't matter what causes it."

November 17 - Pricewaterhouse Cooper has released a study on the costs and coverage potential of President-Elect Barack Obama's health care reform plan.  The study concludes that the cost of Obama's plan would rise from $75 billion in 2009 to $130 billion in 2018.  These projections are partially based upon data of Massachusetts' attempt to create universal healthcare, and do not account for some unspecified savings promised by Obama's plan.  PwC's study also states that the Obama plan would extend insurance coverage to 30 million out of 47 million currently uninsured.   The study goes on to consider the implications of Obama's proposal for different players within the system--providers, insurers, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and employers-and offers five "big ideas" for improving healthcare.

November 12 - The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, plans to release a health care reform proposal. The Journal reports that Baucus' plan resembles the one put forward by Obama campaign in many respects: both focus on covering as many of the country's 46 million uninsured as possible, and both feature a Health Insurance Exchange. Baucus' plan, however, would feature a mandate to purchase coverage, one of the major points of contention between Senators Obama and Clinton during the primaries. The report gives only indirect indications of the plan's cost:

"Some experts predict that a health system covering all Americans would necessitate $100 billion to $150 billion in new Federal spending per year. But savings from the reforms proposed earlier in this Call to Action and the financing mechanisms in this section can make the net cost of reform much smaller."

November 11 - Democratic representative Pete Stark, chair of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, declared yesterday that Congress should waive its PAYGO rules to pass a fundamental reform of the healthcare system and to avoid massive Medicare payment cuts to physicians. Stark cited the waiving of PAYGO for other spending measures like the $700 billion dollar rescue package and Iraq war costs, and asked why large numbers of uninsured should not represent an equally urgent priority. US Budget Watch estimated that plan for health care reform put forward by the Obama campaign would add $52 to $106 billion to the deficit in 2013.