In the middle of a post defending the healthcare insurance reform bills making their way through the Congress, Ezra Klein makes a persuasive strategic argument against these bills:
Opportunities at health-care reform do not happen frequently. The average between major attempts is 19.5 years. That’s 19.5 years in which the uninsured stay uninsured and their ranks grow.
I have made precisely that same argument here any number of times over the last several years. Unless you believe that the current bills in their current form solve all of the problems with the healthcare system that will need urgent, immediate attention over the period of the next 20 years, they aren’t implementing the right reforms.
The reform that is in the most urgent need is reducing the trends in costs, “bending the cost curve down”, as it’s apparently being called these days. Several CBO findings, any number of analyses, and basic supply and demand economics all provide ample proof that the present bill doesn’t accomplish that. We can’t wait another 20 years for it.
We need a lot more than what Congress is debating will accomplish.
