Health Care "Reform"

Honestly, I have no clue how to feel about the current iterations of the health care reform bill. There's just so much conflicting analysis and it seems pointless to read the damn bill until they get to the final. It's not like anything I have to say is going to change it. But Karen Tumulty's piece is still worth reading. It's encouraging she finds points of agreement on some positive aspects.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the health care legislation now making its way through both houses of Congress would do some things well. It would cover almost all of the roughly 33 million legal residents of this country who now lack health insurance. And a vast expansion of Medicaid, coupled with billions of dollars in subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans buy insurance, would help ensure that most people end up spending less on their health bills, according to a new analysis by the CBO.

Less encouraging is a consenus that reining in the larger forces driving high health costs and delivering more efficient services are falling to special interests. And from what I've had time to read around the internets, the public option is looking more and more like it's either dead or at least far from the formerly popular modifier - robust. Still, if more people are able to get insurance and if they really prevent some of the more egregious practices of private industry, I guess that's better than nothing. Not really sure.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]