Looming Health Care Storm

A hurricane-force “perfect storm” of dangerous health care currents will hit the American economy next year, a bipartisan coalition warned last month. It will uproot at least 6 million Americans from their private health insurance plans and swamp employers as health care costs rise at four times the overall inflation rate.

Although that alarm came from the National Coalition on Health Care, a group chaired by former Presidents George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and representing companies employing 100 million Americans, Congress ignored it, focusing instead on that other storm, in Afghanistan.

On Friday, though, a House-Senate conference committee began making health care decisions that will be pivotal to the prosperity of the nation, especially California. At issue is whether the health care portion of Congress’ economic stimulus package will be modeled on the GOP-supported version that passed the House or a Democratic leadership plan that passed the Senate Finance Committee. The Senate version is the better deal for California and the country.

The House bill would give the state $361 million of the $3-billion national total, helping the unemployed with services that could include but would not be limited to health care.

The Senate bill, by contrast, would give recently laid off Californians $1.1 billion to help to pay for up to a year’s worth of health insurance coverage and three-quarters of a family’s health coverage under COBRA, the law that allows a worker to retain health insurance after being laid off. The package would also automatically increase the federal share of Medi-Cal spending by $734 million, without requiring new state spending.

This infusion could help prevent the predicted cuts in state health care funding, as well as finance the postponed expansions of California’s Healthy Families program to low-income working parents. Under the Senate plan, California would get the biggest health care boost of any state, even beyond proportion to its size. Such largess may seem economically incautious; it’s not. The Senate bill, by distributing money immediately to the nation’s battered hospitals, doctors and patients, is far more likely to stimulate the economy than the House bill, which would direct 85% of its $100 billion in long-term tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals.

Leaders in Washington may not be able to stop the health care hurricane in their conference committee negotiations this week, but by supporting the Senate Democrats’ generally solid coverage plan they can help Americans escape its most deadly effects.