What Reform?

With President Obama now backing away from the "public" option of providing health insurance through the federal government, I have to ask the question: Can the bill proposed, and as tweaked by the Senate, even be called health care reform?

No. Because in my opinion, it couldn't be called reform beforehand, either.

I've had a few discussions with a few people about this, and, other disagreements aside, the one principal point that we agree on is that this bill and its iterations are not reform at all -- the bills merely represent an extension of existing government benefits to more than ahve been elibible for them before.

That's not solving the problem; that's extending a nice white picket fence further around the bullpen when you really need barbed wire to keep the bulls from getting out.

We need a plan that controls costs, not one that throws more money at what are already outrageous costs for health care. How that would be done, though, that's the trouble. I don't think government subsidies are the answer -- because they certainly don't work from the private point of view, either. Private health insurance isn't anything more than a subsidy that we pay for. We pay a certain amount and get discounted (or free) services, if we toss enough money into the pot. But the costs are the same, no matter if it's us paying a private ensurer or the government subsidizing everything in sight.

So what's the solution? How do we make costs go down? I don't know. I know doctors and other health professionals pay a lot for their education. I know they have their own bills to pay. But there's got to be some give-and-take, some wiggle room in there somewhere, where costs can be cut and the savings passed on to those who need the services.