As more details get crapped out of the Finance Committee, the already awful bill looks even worse. Ezra Klein explains:
The point of health-care insurance is to protect against the financial burden of catastrophe. So imagine a year of catastrophe. The plan includes out-of-pocket limits, but they’re tied to the laws governing health savings accounts. For a family above 300 percent of poverty, that means a maximum out-of-pocket limit of $11,600. If that family made $78,000 a year, and paid $10,800 in premiums, that would mean 29 percent of their income would go towards medical costs.
So under the Baucus Plan, families with a sick or injured member could still very easily go broke, or at least could become rapidly buried under medical bills.
From what I understand, the source of this ticking time bomb within the Baucus Plan is the toxic combination of mandates and weak subsidies. In other words, you’ll be forced into the system, but if you’re of a certain income range the subsidies are too weak to protect you from financial ruin.
Naturally, the current system is causing financial disasters far worse than the Baucus “solution” would. Therefore the Baucus Plan is “better” than the current system. But that’s kind of like saying, to quote Larry David, “There’s a good Hodgkins.”
The Baucus Plan is unacceptable in almost every way. It’s more expensive, more abusive, more corrupt, and more politically damaging for the Democrats than any other healthcare reform bill to date.
