Common Sense + Expert Opinions on Obama’s Dangerously Flawed Health Care Plan

First, though, let me opine for a minute. Steve Clemons writes at Huffington Post that he received this argument for choice from an Obama surrogate:

We as a nation have to decide, do we want to be forced to pay for universal medical insurance, like we are mandated to pay for auto insurance now? Or would we rather have the option of CHOICE — to be able to decide whether or not we want to buy our medical coverage when we think the time is right?

Barack Obama’s plan thoughtfully does not want to put another mandated cost, like auto insurance, on the backs of the people, especially the young, who already have college costs to contend with. However, the coverage is always there for you, if and when you need it. That is our decision and our choice!

WTF??? So if some drugged-up 17-year-old hits my car on the highway, it’s okay with Barack Obama that he doesn’t have car insurance (even though it’s required by law)? And that my county’s hospital (whose budget is already stretched to the max) will have to eat the costs of his emergency and long-term care? So it’s okay that I have to pay extra on my own policy to cover uninsured motorists?

Then there’s that “the young” — who are healthy, presumably — don’t need mandated health insurance, which ironically is one of Tucker Carlson’s favorite arguments against universal care. What will happen when those “young” are hit by a car or injured while playing a sport? What if they have diabetes or high blood pressure — two ailments becoming more common among the young that go undiagnosed and under-treated until the problems become so severe that the health costs are enormous? What will happen is that we TAXPAYERS, as well as their parents and spouses — and my struggling county hospital, and other public institutions like it — will have to cover their enormous medical expenses. Whereas, if they’d had John Edwards’ or Hillary Clinton’s insurance, they would have been fully covered.

Then there’s the deadliest effect of the deficiency of Obama’s plan, expressed by Ezra Klein:

The problem isn’t that it leaves people out, but that it effectively closes off his ability to regulate the insurance industry, and opens up a flaw that could bring down his whole proposal.

Hey, this is plain ol’ common sense. It’s why we all want every driver to be insured! Now let’s check out the opinion, and essential reasoning, of the experts on the flaws in Obama’s health care plan:

Ezra Klein, “OBAMA’S “HARRY AND LOUISE” AD,” The Prospect:

A mandate is not how you cover everyone, it’s how you force insurers to cover everyone, and discriminate against no one. And even if you don’t have a mandate in your plan, to argue against universal mechanisms because they force people to buy insurance is supremely damaging to the long-term goal, which Obama professes support for, of some system in which everyone is, and has to be, covered.

In the end, his plan is not universal, does not attempt to be, and is probably less generous in its affordability provisions than Clinton’s. And even so, I wouldn’t really care, as it’s still a pretty good plan, except that he’s decided to respond to the inadequacies of his own policy by fear-mongering against not only better policy, but the type of policy he’s probably going to have to eventually adopt. It’s very, very short-sighted.

Note: I have more below on Obama’s “fear-mongering” campaign with a nasty mailer he sent out attacking Clinton’s health plan, which harkens back to the Harry & Louise campaign in 1993 led by the huge insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

Also: To quote from Ezra Klein’s piece is to do it an injustice. It must be read in full. (I bet John Edwards watched that debate Thursday night, and would have given anything to have torn into Obama over his idiotic thinking that caters to corporations rather than to all Americans.)

Steve Clemons, “Note to Barack Obama: Choice is the Problem, Not the Fix in Health Insurance,” Huffington Post, February 1, 2008:

Choice means that many who are healthy and don’t have insurance don’t kick into a system that would help subsidize the less well-off economically and those who may be ill. Thus, insurers want to cherry-pick among those they want in their portfolios and want to avoid covering those at the lower end of the spectrum.

Including the non-participants in a comprehensive program would make everyone’s costs decline on average, but you need full participation.

The Urban Institute, February 1, 2008:

In this brief we conclude that, absent a single payer system, it is not possible to achieve universal coverage without an individual mandate. The evidence is strong that voluntary measures alone would leave large numbers of people uninsured. Voluntary measures would tend to enroll disproportionate numbers of individuals with higher cost health problems, creating high premiums and instability in the insurance pools in which they are enrolled, unless further significant government subsidization is provided. The government would also have difficulty redirecting current spending on the uninsured to offset some of the cost associated with a new program without universal coverage.

Paul Krugman, Princeton University economist and columnist for the New York Times, “Obama Does Harry and Louise Again…,” February 1, 2008:

The Obama campaign sends out an ugly mailer. Sorry, but this is just destructive — like the Obama plan, the Clinton plan offers subsidies to lower-income families. And BO himself has conceded that he might have to penalize people who don’t buy insurance until they need care.

Here is that mailer:

As the Clinton campaign’s Fact Hub noted yesterday:

In 1993, the health insurance industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to scare people into opposing universal health care. Here’s a screen shot from the infamous Harry and Louise ad:

[Image of Harry & Louise ad]

Now, Sen. Obama is sending mail to voters around the country, using the exact same tactics [...]

Sen. Obama fails to mention Hillary’s plan cuts costs just as aggressively as Sen. Obama, if not more so.

Hillary’s plan contains more generous subsidies than the Obama plan. Noted health expert Ken Thorpe of Emory University concluded that under the Hillary plan, everyone will be able to afford coverage.

The Obama plan leaves 15 million people out, which drives up costs because everyone else ends up subsidizing their emergency care.

Besides the experts I’ve cited above, the Denver Post weighed in yesterday in its endorsement of Hillary Clinton:

Obama has criticized Clinton’s health care plan because it requires citizens to buy coverage while subsidizing low-income workers. But Obama’s voluntary plan simply won’t work, any more than a voluntary Social Security plan could work. By allowing seemingly healthy people to avoid buying insurance, Obama would simply saddle the taxpayers with the costs of their care if and when they are stricken by such catastrophic illnesses as cancer.

For more, please see Alegre’s excellent diary at Daily Kos.