Summary
The paper warns that "health care cost growth threatens businesses, workers, and the overall health of the American economy," and frets that "if trends continue, health benefit costs will exceed profits in Fortune 500 companies in 2008." [...] to realize cost containment, Wyden's state agencies would need to define, which is to say, regulate, qualified plans-a sensible policy that led the insurance industry to oppose a similar idea under a different name when Clinton proposed managed competition in 1993.
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Extract
The Elusive Politics of Reform
IF HEALTH INSURANCE WERE CHEAP, we could all buy it. If universal health care could get 60 votes in the Senate, we'd all have it. But these two imperatives-the need to control costs and the need to attract the 60 Senate votes required to overcome a filibuster-point in opposite directions. This is the central paradox of health reform.
The most intractable policy problem is not, fundamentally, the 47 million uninsured or the fact that insurers have a business model right out of Dickens. It's cost. In 2006, the average family policy cost $13,600. This is why one out of six Americans are uninsured; they can't afford the premiums. An October 2007 Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that more Americans were "very worried" about being priced out of their health insura...See the full content of this document
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