Healthcare summit: Let’s agree to agree
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If you notice, President Obama repeatedly is attempting to describe where Democrats and Republicans agree, even as Republicans argue, as Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona just has, that there are fundamental disagreements between them.
Undeterred, Obama ticked off four areas of agreement:
- Prohibiting insurers from dropping customers when they get sick
- Extending dependent coverage for young people, allowing them to stay on family members’ insurance plan
- No limits on the amount of health benefits people can consume under a plan in a year or in their lifetimes
- Prohibiting insurers from discriminating against customers with preexisting medical conditions
Even if this is true, it’s almost beside the point, as Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.) is explaining.
The underlying issue is the mechanism that is created to bring about these reforms. For example, Democrats argue that if insurers are forced to accept sick people, then the only way to keep insurance affordable for them and everybody else is by forcing young, healthy people to buy insurance through the individual mandate.
The way to help those individuals buy insurance, they say, is through regulated exchanges. Republicans appear to have no interest in setting up insurance exchanges, which is the centerpiece of the Democratic bill, or expanding Medicaid for low-income people.
No doubt, some of the above could be done in a small-scale bill, but that arguably would do little to extend coverage to the tens of millions of Americans who currently don’t have it. The question is why Obama is so interested in telling the room (and America) where Democrats and Republicans agree — even if they don’t necessarily agree that they agree.
Is it to paint Republicans as unreasonable? Is it to show the country that more of a consensus exists on reform than they believe?
-- James Oliphant