Couple of questions for the "kill the bill" folks [View All]

[liberalpragmatist]

I see a couple of major arguments about why we should kill the bill and what we should do now which I find holes in. And I'm curious to see if we can get a good discussion going on this.

First, people keep arguing that with the public option and then the Medicare buy-in removed, insurance under the mandate is going to be unaffordable. However neither the public plan in its more recent incarnations, nor the Medicare buy-in, would have done anything to solve this. The weak public plan offered in the House bill, and the opt-out public plan offered in the initial Senate bill, were estimated to only cover a few million people in ten years and would enjoy comparable prices - possibly even slightly higher premiums - than the private insurance companies. Depending on how it was structured, the Medicare buy-in might have offered significantly lower premiums for those 55 and older, but that depended on whether it would be regular Medicare they received or a separate component with its own negotiated rates. And even if it enjoyed regular Medicare rates, everyone under 55 was still going to face a competition mainly between private insurers. So the question is, why "kill the bill" citing cost containment, if the provisions you withdrew your support over, didn't provide cost containment?

Second, I don't understand how people can be so cynical that we'll never fix or expand the bill, while proclaiming in the same breath that we can start all over and redo this either after the midterms or this spring. If Congress is too incompetent to make additions and tweaks to existing legislation, then how confident are you that they'll start over from scratch and magically come up with something vastly better?

UPDATE: Also, on update, I have a third question: what exactly is so onerous about the fine for non-compliance with the individual mandate. It really is more of a "pay-or-play" mechanism on a small scale, similar to the House bill's provisions for employers who either have to cover their workers or pay a special tax.

Basically, on your tax form you would be asked if you have health insurance, then depending on your income bracket you may or may not have to pay a $750 per year tax. Which, btw, is cheaper than many health insurance policies. Nobody is going to jail for refusing to buy health insurance.