WyBlog

What's so great about a 95% solution?

There has apparently been a "breakthrough" in the bipartisan Senate health care bill negotiations. (I love that word "bipartisan", a noun meaning everybody has to bend over and grab their ankles.) Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) is giddy with excitement because he has reached a consensus on providing health care to 95% of Americans.

A draft bipartisan healthcare reform bill being negotiated in the Senate would extend insurance coverage to 95 percent of legal U.S. residents, cost less than $900 billion and actually reduce the federal budget deficit over 10 years, Senate Finance Committee [Chairman] Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Wednesday.

Before we break out the champagne let me ask a question.

The numbers being bandied around say there are currently 15% of Americans who lack health insurance. Ergo, 85% of Americans are already covered. Senator Baucus plans to extend that coverage up to 95%, a net gain of 10% of the population. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation arrives at somewhere around 30 million additional Americans who will be covered under his plan.

$900 billion divided by 30 million is $30,000 per person. That's a pretty tidy chunk of change. And yet we're told that the public option is inferior to the congressional health plan that currently covers Senator Baucus (and President Obama).

My Aetna plan is pretty crummy too, and it only costs $12,000. NJ Family Care, which is the "public option" already available to every New Jersey resident who bothers to fill out the paperwork, costs significantly less (although, to be fair, it covers less too).

So here's my question. For that kind of money why aren't they just enrolling every uninsured person into either my crummy Aetna plan or a federal equivalent of NJ Family Care? And what's the deal with leaving 5% (around 15 million Americans) uninsured and calling what they're doing a "success"? Why restructure the entire health care system (of which somewhere around 80% of the participants are "satisified" with their benefits) just to cover a small minority of uninsured folks?

Posted at 22:47 by Chris Wysocki   []   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |
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