Kennedy’s Draft Health Care Bill Released
Senator Kennedy’s draft health plan has been released and it is much as expected: Individual’s would be required to buy health insurance, insurers would be required to cover everyone (even those with pre-existing conditions), people who are even nominally poor would get subsidies to help them pay their policies. It sounds like heaven until you start wondering how the government will pay for all this, particularly since this plan does little to address the root problems with our warped health care system — bad incentives. Patients have little incentive to behave in ways that will reduce their costs (e.g. quit smoking, exercise, take their medications, or lose weight), specialists have too many incentives to provide care that is not needed, nobody in the health care system has incentives to provide quality care, and insurers have no incentives to make care more efficient or cost effective.
The Republicans in general are going to loath either of these bills. Keith Hennessey has a detailed and interesting analysis here. He has also compared Kennedy’s plan to the House Democrat’s plan. His analysis gives a good idea of what we will be hearing soon.
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