The Senate healthcare reform bill looks like a really good deal for much of the individual market. Ezra Klein summarizes today's CBO analysis on costs:
The CBO estimates that 57 percent of people in the individual market will receive subsidies to help them purchase health-care insurance (folks on the individual market tend to be much lower-income, with much less stable employment). Those subsidies will reduce premium costs by between 56 to 59 percent for the average beneficiary. So in the final analysis, the effect of reform on your typical individual market purchasers is to give them insurance that's about 30 percent better but only 10 to 12 percent more expensive, and then assure them subsidies that will lower their payments by more than 50 percent.
For a bill right out of the box, this is really solid. Now imagine the long term impact of the legislation coupled with an incremental expansion of the reforms.