The official Republican line on the health care reform debate has been that they've got really great ideas but Democrats have failed to include them in forming the legislation. Throughout the debate, House Minority Leader John Boehner would conduct news conferences and wring his hands, despairing that the Democrats weren't playing fairly and promising that the GOP would submit their own version of a health care reform bill for a vote in Congress. That the Senate health care reform bill was loaded with compromises in order to attract GOP support had apparently escaped Mr. Boehner.
Last week, John Boehner made quite a big deal about introducing the Republican health care plan. The irony, after whining for months that the Democrats had excluded the GOP in the process, that Republicans failed to include a single Democratic Party proposal in their bill was lost on Boehner. You can guess the major tenets of the GOP health care plan; no individual or business mandates, no public option, tax credits, and no restrictions on how private insurers conduct their business. Boehner promised the proposed bill would be forwarded to the Congressional Budget Office for review.
Last night the CBO issued their report on the proposed Republican plan. From Ezra Klein:
The Democratic bill... covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan. And amazingly, the Democratic bill has already been through three committees and a merger process. It's already been shown to interest groups and advocacy organizations and industry stakeholders. It's already made its compromises with reality. It's already been through the legislative sausage grinder. And yet it saves more money and covers more people than the blank-slate alternative proposed by John Boehner and the House Republicans. The Democrats, constrained by reality, produced a far better plan than Boehner, who was constrained solely by his political imagination and legislative skill.
To be fair, there is one thing Klein fails to mention; the cost of the Democrats plan is something on the order of a trillion dollars over the next ten years and the cost of the Republican plan over the same period is $61B. Big difference. While the Democrats claim any final health care reform legislation must not contribute to the deficit, details on how exactly that's done haven't been very clear.
Again, the intent of health care reform is to increase coverage and reduce costs. The question for Republicans is why we would spend even $61B for reform that doesn't make a lick of difference in terms of providing expanded insurance coverage and leaves the private insurers and providers without any incentives to lower their ever increasing costs.
That sounds an awful lot like we have now. And without having to spend 61 billion dollars.
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