Robert Laszewski

Predicting the outcome of Wednesday's Senate vote on the $245 billion deficit adding doc fix was easy.

Readers of this blog know that I have lots of concerns for the Senate Finance health bill primarily because it does not so much represent health care reform as just an expensive entitlement expansion.

Milliman consulting actuary, Robert Dobson, is out with a must read paper for those that think the "Cadillac" health plan tax makes sense.

The next big test for a healthcare bill in 2009 (notice that I did not call it healthcare reform) will come in Senate Finance.

Readers of this blog already know of my disappointment in what the White House and many in Congress are calling "health care reform." So, I was happy to see Alain Enthoven's recent KHN op-ed.

For me, one of the more amazing things about this healthcare debate is the way the press and many advocates of healthcare reform have accepted the notion that the fiscal objective should be to pass a healthcare bill that is "deficit neutral."

The latest word is that the Democratic leadership and the White House see a “60 percent chance” they will split their health care bill into two parts.

It looks to me like the popular objections to a healthcare bill being expressed by voters this month are concentrated in two primary areas: a concern about “government control of the healthcare system”; and the trillion-dollar cost of a healthcare bill at a time deficits are swelling.

Any of us who do healthcare policy full time might as well take the rest of the month off and let the demagogues bent on scaring the American people just get it all out. I swear it is getting worse by the hour.

Advocates of the health care bills now pending in Congress, led by the President, have been calling for health care reform. They argue that our health care system is unsustainable as it is. Not only do we need to create a system of universal coverage but also we need to do it in a way that is sustainable, affordable, and doesn’t continue to add to our deficits.