FYI

[brynndragon]

Today at 3PM on WBUR (90.9 FM and online at WBUR.org) fucking Romney and members of the state legislature will be discussing the new health care plan with the public. I'll be listening, because I want to know if my (and some friend's) impression that this is taking a nice notion[1] and turning it into a nightmare for people who are eking out a living or are (or become) GoLs[2].

[1] No matter how feasible you think it is (I'm up in the air about it myself), quality health care for everyone (aka universal health care) is a fabulous idea.

[2] Gentlepeople of Leisure, also known as the unemployed

Comments

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

Romney ain't in charge of shit, especially where this healthcare bill is concerned. It's strictly a compromise between the people who want an individual mandate, the people who want an employer mandate, and the demands of the federal government with regard to keeping that $385 million in federal funding. What Romney thought of this bill just didn't matter at any point in the process, because it was pretty much a given that whatever bill ended up approved by both chambers would pass by a veto-proof margin. Now, chances are Romney will line-item veto the employer assessment and offer some other idea for that instead, because he thinks $295/employee/year is just too high a price for poor, struggling businesses like Wal-Mart to have to pay. But that won't matter anyway, because the legislature will just override him and put the bill into law as it stands.

I don't like the individual mandate at all -- in fact, I don't like the employer mandate all that much, if we're talking about what the best solution would be; but if we're talking about what the best feasible solution would be, then an employer mandate is better than an indivudual mandate, since we just aren't going to get real single-payer health care anytime soon. And I think it's possible, with the expansion of MassHealth, and depending on how "affordable" gets defined and how much arm-twisting is done to the insurance companies to get them to offer low-cost plans that don't suck ass, for the individual mandate to fail to be really onerous. I'm reserving judgment on whether it will be onerous or not, since obviously a lot of these things haven't been determined yet. But if it ends up that the standard for affordability is a reasonable one, so no one is forced to make untenable choices in order to have the health care required by law, and that the health plans available at the lowest "affordable" level aren't all shitty high-deductible-low-coverage plans that are only cheap as long as you stay healthy, then the individual mandate is an acceptable price to pay to get broader coverage and to force non-insuring employers to contribute something -- $295/employee/year isn't a lot, but it's more than they're contributing right now.

Of course, there are other arguments that bear on this. Bob at Blue Mass Group argues that it's inappropriate for the government to require individuals to enter into contracts with private entities, and he's not wrong. But there were a lot of people, both in business and in the state government, who really wanted an individual mandate and no employer mandate, so unfortunately this bill was about the best thing we could get. It's not great, but it's far from a disaster.