Words."Now we have arrived at an even bigger national moment. Within a few weeks, we will know whether health care plans designed to eliminate a problem that has vexed every president since Franklin Roosevelt will make it to this president’s desk.
Both the House and a committee in the Senate have just shown their cards in the political poker game of the decade. The price of near-universal health, the House plan indicates, will be about $1 trillion, paid for with a surtax on couples who earn more than $350,000 a year, and a promise of savings in federal programs and the considerable waste stream of the private system.
The measures would require everyone to get health care, with subsidies for the poor. Employers, except for smaller businesses, would have to provide insurance or pay a fee to the government. And there would be a public option — a plan that would, in theory, keep insurance companies honest by acting as a legitimate competitor.
The final bill will likely be the kind of sausage that is never pretty in the making.
...About 48 million Americans have no health care, which means most people are at least one degree of separation from someone with no coverage.
...At the other end are people who have terrific health care, even gold-plated, and will likely find nothing in the legislative overhaul for them. But dissatisfaction runs high even among those with good benefits.
...Over the last decade, the courts have processed millions of former members of the middle class who lost it all on one catastrophic illness — the leading cause of most personal bankruptcies.
...To change this system is an enormous gamble, arguably on the magnitude of creating Social Security. The costs are scary, and coupled with trillon-dollar deficits, are prompting many independents to doubt the road that Obama has chosen.
All of this will make for a fast-round of shouting among all the interests groups, and a stimulus package for lobbyists. But this time it may not matter: the future of American health care could be decided by the politics of personal experience."
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