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Yesterday the Senate Finance Committee trotted out Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf to state the obvious: that health reform is really, really expensive. To pay for it, we might have to provide doctors with incentives so that they don't order unnecessary tests and operations. We might have to raise some taxes. Now, predictably, centrist senators are using Elemendorf's Captain Obvious statement to "resist timelines" on health reform, Ryan Grim reports. Slowing the momentum is a bad idea. The House has a bill ready. Senate HELP has a bill ready. We're only waiting for Senate Finance, and while these are the people tasked with making the tough choices on how to pay for health reform, we already know the options. Ezra Klein breaks them down:
a) Support, as the CBO says you should, the eradication of the tax exclusion that protects employer-based health-care insurance;b) Support, as Lewin and Commonwealth say you should, a public insurance option that can bargain at Medicare's rates;c) Support, as the Office of Management and Budget and every health-care wonk in town says you should, one of the various policies floating around to give MedPAC authority to continually reform and modernize Medicare;d) Support some form of aggressive cost-sharing that would make people extremely angry because it will save money by reducing their access to health-care services;e) Support comparative effectiveness review that can judge not only the effectiveness but also the cost-effectiveness of various treatments, and give the federal government authority to use that data when deciding reimbursement rates.--Dana Goldstein
