It's time to get out there and save HCR.
The public option is gone? Okay, the it's time to cut all of the cost management portions out of the bill -- that includes the Individual Mandate (which is intended to drive down prices by increasing the pool of the healthy insured) and the excise tax on "cadilac" plans.
This would leave us with a bill that moderately reforms the rules by which Insurance companies play, provides subsidies to the poor, and creates some form of state-level exchange.
Not a great bill, but it will not do a great evil.
The current bill, as the Senate has altered it -- has created a preposterous position where folks who are older, or folks with high blood pressure and other pre-existing conditions (hey, I thought those were supposed to go away) end up paying up to three times as much as their peers -- how many of those plans will wind up subject to the excise tax because of their high price-line?
If on the other hand, you are a healthy person, the gov't will give you a stiff tax penalty if you fail to pay for excessively expensive insurance.
Both of those look like taxes that hit people earning less than $200,000 a year.
What's left if the Senate actually strikes the Mandate and the Excise tax from the bill?
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