First, the amount of the new health insurance deduction would grow at the rate of general price inflation and thus would increase more slowly than the value of the current tax exclusion. Second, the minimum value of covered benefits that all participating health plans had to provide would initially be set at the level of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield standard option offered to federal workers in 2011 (we assume that the system’s inaugural year would be 2012); but under your proposal that average value would from that point forward be indexed to growth in gross domestic product per capita rather than growth in health care costs.

Don't you love proposals that saved money because they assume details that aren't based in reality?

Health care costs magically growing at the rate of inflation??? Almost every single-payer system hasn't been able to do that yet- but magically we'll be there by 2011 because of the Healthy Americans Act!

Yeah!

Ezra, yourcredibility is at stake if you're not willing to call this (critical) part of the proposal BS.

PS On a positive note, I'll give you credit for acknowledging the political reality of a UHC-centered health care reform package, and politicians' cowardice in really going out on a limb.

But stop with the cost-savings bit on this. You look silly.

"Increasingly, however, it doesn't look like the money will be there."

Of course the money is "there".

Ezra just happened to cynically lie and smear for the only major Democratic candidate for President who simply was never going to allocate the money.

That's how the healthcare beat goes at the Prospect.

We must do it by hook-or-by- crook, because it is a fundamental building block of restoring the confidence that underlies a sound economy: if you lose your job, or want to jump to what looks like a better job for you, you will not expose yourself and your family to total financial destruction. If you want to hire an employee, your benefits exposure will not explode. It could be worth 25 points alone on the University of Michigan index.

The certainty for the healthcare provider of quicker payment for any patient who shows up at the door will have tremendous aggregate cost benefits. No longer does the provider have to build in a delinquency cushion into the bills – who can imagine how big that is? – and the accumulation of 18% finance charges while insurance companies point at each other, or where the possibility of preexisting condition is examined, may be virtually eliminated.

You've got to be kidding me. One wave of the hand and health care costs now only grow with inflation? Hmm, is there a "collect underpants" step in this plan?

Agree 100% with wisewon here, your credibility is at stake here Ezra. Did you really think you can discuss this without calling them out for that highly unrealistic assumption? You know better, so let's see some intellectual honesty.

Creditability? Ezra has no healthcare creditability. When he fixes his post on HSAs and women's preventive care and stops make ignorant statements like this; "There's nothing efficient about routing health dollars through self-insured employers ..."

Really? Self funded healthplans have the lowest admin cost of any insurance plan in America. They are a fraction of what private insurance companies and Medicare spend. Saving money is now inefficient?

Only someone totally uneducated in Healthcare could make such a statement, and said individual would obviously have no creditablity.

"Creditability? Ezra has no healthcare creditability. When he fixes his post on HSAs and women's preventive care and stops make ignorant statements like this; "There's nothing efficient about routing health dollars through self-insured employers ...""

He actually has perfect credibility on that particular topic.

It's only when good healthcare policy conflicts with Ezra's desire to gain advantages in his career that he starts issuing spittle-flecked lies through his bared teeth to tell the world that up is down and down is up.

He'll sellout universal healthcare for twenty bucks and a smile. Cheapest date in the District. He'd probably sell out his friends too. Folks with no honor tend to manifest it in many ways.

"Ezra, yourcredibility is at stake if you're not willing to call this (critical) part of the proposal BS."

Haven't you been following along over the past year, wisewon.

Ezra is a flat out fraud.

Petey,

I disagree with Ezra on a lot of things, but I'm really tired of your reading your ad hominem attacks. You have a very black-and-white view on who and why Ezra supports, when the reality is a lot less clear.

You supported the candidate who criticized Kerry four years ago for offering a health care plan that covered "too many" lives because it wasn't fiscally responsible. Yes, that was Edwards. So you can pretend to know that he had some true change of heart and saw the importance of covering all of the uninsured, even though the actual number of uninsured hasn't changed much since he first ran in 2003. I think he did it for the politics and was willing to sell that down the river the second he was sworn in office- sort of like how he did it to his wife. Neither of us know the truth. So get off your high horse.

Does Ezra moderate his comments to be socially acceptable in DC? Probably so. But until we can all examine your life in similar detail, I'm highly doubtful that you actually live to the high standard you continually expect from him. We're all human, none of us are perfect-- including you.

Finally-- we've heard you. A lot. The point's been made. A lot. You can just sign your name, we know what the message is. Say something different or stop posting here.

I come from the opposite side of the political spectrum as Ezra and thus obviously disagree with his conclusions. However, I think it is clear that he has integrity (though he could boost it by maybe adding a signapore section to his health of nations deal).

I tend to think that an approach along the lines of the Wyden-Bennet plan or the one outlined by Furman (prgoressive refundable tax credits with backend reforms to make the individual market more effective at pooling risk) are going to be the most tenable political approach moving forward because the recent events on wall street are going to add a significant amount of debt to the nation's balance sheet and it is going to take some time to recover our tax base (this is even assuming the Obama does not extend middle class tax cuts). Thus, a proposal that requires smaller infusion of upfront cash will probably be more politically palatable.

wisewon: Try cleek's pie filters. I don't have to read Petey at all. Instead I get a lovely message like "Your comment reminds me, I could really use some pie!" Much better.

I've been rather hands off about the Wyden proposal, mostly because it seemed unrealistic as discussed... but looking at Wyden's pres releases (and really, Ezra, press releases? That's not reporting), I'm much clearer about just how unrealistic all of this is. And so, like wisewon, I'm kind of just stunned by this post.

Set aside that Wyden's new beaurocracy will make teeth itch on the right and thus kill it, the big problem, as wisewon notes, is the rosy assumptions it makes about health care costs and how magical it will be when everyone gets coverage that suddenly any and all health care will be easily obtained. Mental health treatments? check/ Long term care? check? Chronic care for the elderly? check and check. How is any of this actually paid for? Mysteriously.

Of course it improves costs for middle class consumer - who would oppose amazing low health insurance premiums that cover everything? Well, insurers, mainly, who get essentially nothing in exchange for losing any ability to control their costs (i.e. they can't refuse anyone, or from what I can tell, almost any type of care), and, I'd expect, hospitals, who can probably guess that where this is headed... is a lot of headaches for them as those new state agencies grill them, line by line.

Perhaps, most hilariously, though, is that new acronym for the insurance itself - HAPI. That, it seems to me, is just about as flawlessly Orwellian as it gets. Really Ezra. And we're supposed to take this thing seriously?

"prgoressive refundable tax credits"

If you know your going to give a tax credit in April why collect the money in the first place? This is the fallacy of the BCBS Plan, it is incredibly inefficient to insure expenses you know your going to have. Everyone has routine and minor expenses, eliminate them from insurance, tax away the tax deduction, and let individuals pay for them from their wages. Insurance premium, taxes, and in most cases both add cost while not contributing anything. In the adsence of risk transfer why do we insist on purchasing insurance?

weboy you would be surprised how willing the insurance companies would be to sell policies to everyone that covered everything, as long as someone picks up the tab. Contrary to the propoganda on this site carriers make their profits on % of premium, anything they can do to drive up premium they will gladly accept.If the government allowed them to cover toothpaste they would gladly mark it up 20% and cover it.

This plan is pure fantasy. Healthcare costs have grown at double inflation for 40 years. No reason to think that will change.

Second, the cheapest Federal Employees option costs over $400 per month, which is much more generous than most plans offered by the private sector. I don't see how providing people with more healthcare (or at least more expensive insurance) will save money in either the short-term or long-term. The savings from reduced cost shifting, preventive care, etc just can't offset that much.

It's just not possible to provide up to 45 million more people with health insurance that's more expensive than the average policy that exists now and expect to save money.