Senate health care plan not much different that Bush's health plan in campaign 2004.

[Cleita]

I found this old article that hadn't been scrubbed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21929-2004Aug21.html

<snip>

Projections by the Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, academics and the campaign's Web site suggest that under the best circumstances, Bush's plans for health care would extend coverage to no more than 6 million people over the next decade and possibly as few as 2 million.

"There's little reason to expect that there would be any reduction in the overall numbers of Americans without health insurance," Brookings Institution health policy expert Henry J. Aaron said. "We're swimming against a rather swift current in our efforts to reduce the number of uninsured, and the power of President Bush's proposals to move against that current is, it seems to me, very, very limited."

In his bid for a second term, Bush is reprising much of the health care agenda he ran on in 2000, including tax credits for individuals who purchase insurance, and the formation of new, largely unregulated purchasing pools for small businesses called association health plans.

<snip>

<snip>

The next-largest element in the Bush agenda is a proposal to allow small businesses to band together to purchase insurance through new association health plans. Hauck said 2 million people would be covered if this were enacted. The figure came from a January 2000 CBO report in which the nonpartisan agency said 10,000 to 2 million people might join association health plans.

<snip>

Doesn't this seem like it's been converted into insurance exchanges? Different lipstick on the same old pig, it seems to me. Read the whole article. It also compares the outcome with Medicare part D which is not a howling success today. So how and why are we still in the Bush administration?

[FiveGoodMen]

1. "So how and why are we still in the Bush administration?"

Probably the most important question in America today!

[Turbineguy]

2. Compasionate conservatism

would dictate a fairly painless death.

[liberalpragmatist]

3. ...

So Bush's plan pledged $100 billion over ten years, versus $1 trillion.

The current efforts put the entire individual market into an insurance exchange. Bush's proposal only made that optional, and included no additional regulations on them.

Even the Senate Finance Bill would cover 20 million additional people. Bush's plan covered 2 million.

What we're getting is far from great. But it's really nothing like Bush's proposal, despite this weak attempt at equivalence.

[Cleita]

4. Both plans were written by insurance company insiders. I don't care

how much money you through after bad, it's still bad.