The Health Care Blog: Can HR 3200 Be Fixed?

BY ROGER COLLIER Health care reform looks like it’s stalled. And rightly so, based on the provisions of the House Democrats’ health care reform bill. The grossly misnamed America’s Affordable Health Choices Act (HR 3200) combines the worst of all possible worlds: high taxpayer costs, big increases in federal deficits, and disincentives for businesses to hire, while leaving up to twenty million individuals still uninsured and doing little or nothing to control runaway national health care expenditures. Although the bill would make health care coverage available to many of the millions who currently cannot afford it, its provisions will potentially add some $200 billion a year to federal expenditures, make only miniscule reductions in Medicare cost trends, and impose play-or-pay provisions and a new surtax that could hurt smaller businesses just as they try to recover from the recession. So, is there anything that can be done to fix HR 3200 so that it would provide affordable universal health care coverage without increasing federal deficits or halting the recovery from the recession? Read More