Legal Commentary

How The Health Bill Can Be Made Worse In The Future

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Yglesias misses the mark in an attempt to detail some of the ways a future GOP government can make the current health bill worse in the future:

Rather than repealing the specific tax provisions that finance reform, you’ll see drives to cut taxes for the rich. [. . .] [I]nstead of complaints about how reform is going to blow up the deficit, you’ll see a combination of tax (cut! cut! cut! especially for the rich) and spending policies that do in fact blow up the deficit.

Yglesias misses the most obvious way that Republicans could actually "bend the cost curve" to pay for tax cuts - reduce the funding for Medicaid. The insurance industry will be fine with that (unlike reductions in subsidies to purchase private insurance and elimination of the mandate.) Since the progressive heart of the current bill is in fact the expansion of Medicaid, the Republicans of the future could easily gut the good in the current bill.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 29, 2009 (boomark / email).