Wednesday, February 07, 2018

These Ideas We Shall Always Have With Us

United States of Care is basically an extension of the "Bipartisan Policy Center"'s future of health care initiative (I don't mean institutionally, I mean some of the players, including Frist and Andy Slavitt and Tom Daschle, and their general thrust). Amazing how these people all have so much time to participate in so many of these things! I hope when I'm Daschle's age I have as much money he does and spend it sipping wine in Italy!

Anyway, the point about means testing is here...

BPC’s work will build upon a series of common themes that have animated both parties’ health care proposals, such as:

Policies that promote stable private insurance markets and include pre-existing condition protections
Value-based benefit designs that incentivize delivery of medically appropriate care
Reforms that increase the efficiency of service delivery through appropriate combinations of both public and private incentives while improving the nation’s long-term fiscal position
Approaches to affordability that do not over-subsidize higher-income Americans or under-subsidize lower-income Americans
Medicaid policies that expand administrative flexibility without creating financial risk for states, the federal government, or the beneficiaries of the program

Gotta get it juuuuuuuuust right. Not too hot or too cold. Again, the way to get it juuuuuuuust right is simply to tax the hell out rich people, not to force people to leap through fire hoops to prove their eligibility.