Re the socialism points, I will say I have an in at CBO in the health division, and every time this topic comes up I hear about how current proposals are not socialism. I hear it explained like this (this is not my interpretation, but that of my CBO source):
No serious congressional proposal envisions anything close to socialized medicine. The senate and house proposals are quite similar; they would give subsidies to people with low incomes to purchase PRIVATE coverage (such as Aetna, United Health Plan, Cigna, Kaiser, etc.) of their own choosing. People who are offered health insurance through their employer would in most cases continue to get that insurance. No proposal has government-employed doctors.
There are several "live" proposals right now. All of them would retain the current employer-based system of health insurance but would create a health insurance "exchange" for people who are not offered insurance through their employer or who currently purchase insurance in the individual market. People with very low incomes would have access to Medicaid and people with incomes between 150% of the federal poverty level up to 400% would be eligible for subsidies to help them purchase coverage. People would be required to buy health insurance and would be subject to a financial penalty if they did not buy it. Some proposals would include a public plan that would compete alongside private plans. In CBO estimates based on the actual legislative language, they have not concluded that the public plan would be the lowest cost plan, although they believe it would be lower than the average cost plan, just not the lowest. They don't believe it would become the dominant plan but believe it could get significant enrollment because it would be well-known. But people would have choices other than the public plan and some would be lower cost than the public plan.
I know the discussion is not that active over here at the moment. I just thought I'd throw that out and act like I was an expert for a moment.
|