Main Street

Health Care Round-Up

• Paul Krugman takes a close look at how the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP)’s new health care reform proposal stacks up, and how affordable it is:

  There are a number of ways to look at this number, but maybe the best is to point out that it’s less than 4 percent of the $33 trillion the U.S. government predicts we’ll spend on health care over the next decade. And that in turn means that much of the expense can be offset with straightforward cost-saving measures, like ending Medicare overpayments to private health insurers and reining in spending on medical procedures with no demonstrated health benefits.

  So fundamental health reform — reform that would eliminate the insecurity about health coverage that looms so large for many Americans — is now within reach. The “centrist” senators, most of them Democrats, who have been holding up reform can no longer claim either that universal coverage is unaffordable or that it won’t work.

• Health Care for America Now (HCAN) has a great section on their website called Steps to Win. It explains the entire process for winning quality, affordable health care for all. In a post at the HCAN blog, Jason Rosenbaum explains which step we’re on now.
• Atrios and Matt Yglesias have been engaged in a small, friendly debate about how much reform is needed. 1. 2. 3.