Presidents address to Congress.

Since I'm not cool enough for cable I watched the joint session of congress on the NYT's website. Below the video they were posting peoples live comments. Most ended up being questions or misconceptions so I thought I would set some of these people straight on exactly what this overhaul means.

The first comment went like this.

I'm a student that works a part-time job and I don't want to be forced to buy health insurance.

So plain and simple according to the HC bill in the Senate Finance Committee if the lowest premium exceeds ten percent of your income you are exempt. As a student and part-time worker I imagine this is the case. You should also know though that the reason for the mandate and fee (950 a year) is not to force people into buying insurance, but instead to make sure people don't wait and put it off. Not to mention most of those people will need some medical care and we want them contributing to the system.

I'm starting to think the Public Option is important in controlling cost.

Ezra Klein wrote on this the other day and I think its important to realize that even with this massive reform we will still have a long way to go to curb the costs. So according to the House Bill the PO is only going to be available on health exchanges for companies that employ less than 20 workers. So in 10 years the PO would enroll around 10 million Americans. That's a fair number, but its not enough people to curb the premiums private insurers will be charging. What the public option does represent is a base for which we can build on in the future. Competition is critical for lower costs, so if the PO works for 10 million people then Congress can open up the door in the future and offer it to more citizens.

I just want the President to explain how were going to pay for it.

Well first it should be noted that if any unexpected costs arise over the implementation of this bill, President Obama promised tonight that he will find a way to pay for it through cuts in other government spending. I appreciated this return to the "pay as you go policy" that Clinton initiated in the 90's. Really though Obama only has to come up with about 1/3 of the dinner check on this bill, the rest of it will come through savings in medicare. He didn't mention it in his speech for the sake of politics, but the easiest way would be to tax the health care benefits most citizens receive from their employers. The other proposal would reduce the charitable tax deductions from 38% to 28%. This would bring in about 267 billion over 10 years. The other proposal that was debated in the House was the "millionaires tax" depending if its an increase of 2 to 5 percent on the income tax it could bring in between 300 and 500 billion.

I'll leave you with a quote from the Presidents Address

"We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it."

TLH