Now that’s rich. Again someone makes with the GOP cavalry as if they have any interest in constructive solutions. If Kondracke is waiting on them to be the voice of reason he’d better start readying his death panel defense.

The one Republican who has made serious noises about voting for the proposal (Snowe) still has not told anyone exactly what she wants. And if you’re scrambling for precisely 60 votes you don’t waste your time on somebody who has had months to tell you what she wants, and still refuses to do so.

@kk
On cost controls I half-agree with you. If the Senate plan gets through it will be an excellent start, but it will only be a start. The trouble with truly comprehensive reform is simple: that’s a big change, and the point of Checks and Balances was to make big changes impossible. Add in the increasing relevance of the filibuster, the fact nobody on the GOP side is willing to offer his vote in exchange for significant cost controls, and that several moderate Dems are half-convinced that their voters want them to kill a plan liberals want…

One huge advantage of passing the Senate plan is that we’ll have lots more real world data on what all these ideas d. It’ll be a lot easier to convince Doctors, for example, to abandon fee-for-service in exchange for something more efficient if it becomes clear that’s the only way to rein in health costs.

BTW, the WSJ editorials should be a huge plus for anyone who wants to control health costs. They are saying flat-out that if this plan passes costs will be controlled so well that hundreds or thousands of the least efficient firms will be driven out of business.

If we get almost everyone into the system, then we can measure inputs and outputs better. In 10 or 20 years, we’ll have the debate about how to ration fairly, based on how much we can afford. That discussion needs to be had, and Americans aren’t ready for it.