OK, I'm recovering from information and opinion overload. I don't know if anyone besides me and Redux and Merc and C-Man care about this much detail, but here goes. Critics of the bill say among other things that:
- Congress will never do any cost cutting of Medicare and the Sustainable Growth Rate adjustment for doctors (SGR)
- If you give people insurance, they will use it (duh)
- Congress is dancing with special interests
I checked out the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (a NONPARTISAN think group)
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3021 and here's what they state
on Sustainable Growth Rate adjustment for doctors
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Congress likely will never let the full SGR cuts take effect, and it probably won’t offset the cost of scrapping them. But that cost is neither part of, nor in any way a result of, health care reform — the federal government will incur this cost regardless of health care reform, not because of it. This fact is undeniable: if health reform legislation were to die tomorrow, the full SGR cost would remain. To be sure, it would be better if Congress offset the cost of cancelling the SGR cuts. But that issue is separate from the question of whether the health care reform bills themselves add to the deficit or not.
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I also might add that the perception that Congress will not act to control Medicare costs is a false one. Again check out the documentation in the link above if you're interested.
If you give people insurance they will use it (duh)
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Providing insurance coverage for tens of millions of uninsured Americans will necessarily raise total health care spending in the short term. The real issues here are: (1) whether health reform includes provisions to cover the costs of these insurance expansions so that deficits and debt do not increase; and (2) whether health reform includes steps that begin to slow the rate of health cost growth so that total health spending is lower in the longer run than it otherwise would be. The House and Senate bills meet the first test, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), with the House bill reducing deficits by $138 billion over ten years, the Senate bill reducing deficits by $130 billion over that period, and both bills continuing to reduce deficits for at least a decade after that. The bills also hold promise for the second test, CBO says, although policymakers will need to do more to slow health cost growth as we learn more about how to do it, such as by applying the knowledge gained in the coming decade from pilot projects in the health bills, comparative effectiveness research, and the like.
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Congress is dancing with special interests
This is just my opinion. Congress dances with special interests on EVERYTHING. And look at Dick Cheney's connection with Halliburton or Bush's tie with big oil and the Bin Laden's. I won't say that this complaint does not have some validity, but it is part of a larger over-all problem in American government. Republicans are lapdogs to one set of groups and Democrats to another. And often special interest groups will try to play one party off against another. I'm sure the Roman Empire had the same problem. It would be nice if we could cure it, but I feel it is an issue seperate from the health care debate.