HCR was a deficit-reducing net positive. (So why can't we run on it?)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

In our bogus deficit concern environment there has been only one thing since 2001 that has actually taken any step to reduce the deficit. Only one.

Healthcare reform. So of course we cannot effectively run on it or even admit it exists!

September 11, 2010, 2:09 pm
Consider The Curve Bent
Paul Krugman

Wow — a lot of misinformation about the new estimates on health care costs. Read Ezra Klein, who concludes:

So, the nickel version: Spending goes up in 2014 because we’re covering 30 million new people and then down after that because we’re controlling costs in the system.

So yes, there’s a bump when 35 million people who would otherwise have been uninsured get coverage; but growth is slower after that, which will mean big savings in the long run. It really doesn’t matter at all whether your estimate says that overall health spending will be slightly higher or slightly lower in 2019 as a result of the law; aside from the fact that covering all those people with at most a minimal rise in costs is itself a policy triumph, it’s spending in the decades that follow that matters for cost.

And let’s be clear: you could not have gotten the cost savings without the move to near-universal coverage, for both political and technical reasons. This thing really is a package — a package that, with all its flaws, both makes our society more decent and improves our long-run budget outlook.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/consider-the-curve-bent/

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/09/does_health-care_reform_bend_t.html

[dennis4868]

1. Because the repubs/media....

control the "narrative" thanks to the spineless dems!

[Mimosa]

2. Because nothing's happened yet. n/t

[dennis4868]

3. really?

My daughter finally got health insurance even though she had a preexisting condition.....

[Mimosa]

6. I'm glad you can afford the premiums. n/t

[leveymg]

4. Because nobody really gives a crap about the deficit, and HCR didn't deliver what people wanted:

a federal option to overpriced private insurance.

Nobody's running on HCR because it ended up as just another industry bail-out.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

7. probably right on both points

[leftstreet]

9. +1

Exactly

[Lint Head]

5. Because it is HIR not HCR. There was no health care reform.

There was only health 'insurance' reform. Health care reform would involve health care for all, period.

[metapunditedgy]

8. I heard a claim that it has been months since any Democrats ran a campaign commercial

touting HCR. Is that true?

[Edweird]

10. The individual mandate is failed (Mass) FAR RW policy. It helps the ins. cos, not the people.

Care will still be unaffordable and inaccessible - only you are REQUIRED to buy your overpriced (even more so now with unheard of increases coming down the pike) insurance. It's a total screwjob.

[Fumesucker]

11. What is this "healthcare reform" of which you speak?

All I recall is some screwing around with health insurance that forces people to buy it..