Willco: The bill is better than a status quo, and you'd be hard pressed to find many people who would disagree with the fact that democrats threw nearly every cost bending idea into the bill, except the public option of course. The CBO numbers speak for themselves. I notice you make the same criticism of the bill in every discussion of it, but it's simply not true.
The CBO numbers have nothing to do with health care costs; the CBO numbers reiterate it will cut government spending, much of it in the forms of cuts to programs already in existence. Even then, the CBO itself is unsure if all the Medicare savings will come to fruition:
"It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate of [Medicare] spending could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or through reductions in access to care or the quality of care," the agency says in its report.
Way to refute my points by saying, "Well, hey, that's just not true!"
Saying that the Democrats threw in every cost bending idea - which is
not true - other than the ones that would, y'know,
actually cut costs, shows how little you actually care about the real debate.
The exchange is the only thing that could
theoretically cut costs, and a lot of that is in
theory. The risk pools could be too small, and without a viable public option, the likelihood is that insurers that operate on profit won't have any incentive to offer low-priced plans on the exchange. The exchange was originally created to force insurers to compete with a federal plan, and that's why it would have worked. That's not the case anymore.
I already linked to the recent report that the industry is already fudging numbers in order to meet federal guidelines, but pad their profit margins. Not to mention that the health care industry saw stock prices surge as the bill passed, showing more confidence by investors that they will continue to make a killing off of us dying.
Like I said, it has a great deal of positive consumer protections loaded within it, but the bill doesn't really address costs. It's a watered down piece of legislation that barely passes as reform, and I believe will put us on a path that will inevitably lead to a single-payer system when everyone realizes, "Hey, wait a minute, this isn't really working."
