From Think Progress' Health Care Wonk Room:
Meanwhile, Jonathan Cohn explains that extending affordable coverage to all Americans would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 trillion “if done properly.” “Anything less and you have to start cutting back. You offer lower subsidies. You provide people with weaker, less protective insurance. You roll out changes over time.” Cohn believes that the administration is trying to lower the cost of the reform to around $700 billion, a number that would require very serious cut backs in subsidies and could potentially endanger the effectiveness of an individual mandate. “[Y]]ou’ll end up reducing them down to levels where large numbers of people still couldn’t afford insurance. And if people can’t afford insurance, you can’t make them buy it,” Cohn concludes.
In other words, at $700 billion, health reform becomes somewhat ineffectual or at best, incremental; it’s certainly not universal. At $700 billion, the final bill would likely include “the structural and regulatory changes around which universal coverage could eventually be built,” but it would further put off “the dream” of universal coverage and would likely do very little to lower long-term health care spending.
Ultimately, the President has a choice to make. He can either scale down reform — in an effort to please conservative Democrats and Olympia Snowe — and abandon good policy and his liberal base, or he can throw his support behind a robust reform plan and stake his entire presidency on seeing it pass.
