Palin Takes on Baucus

Sarah Palin's facebook page has been relatively quiet lately. She made it louder with a roughly 1000 word commentary on the Baucus bill. Most of the criticism echoed that of the Price Waterhouse report released earlier last week. The main criticism comes down to the idea that pre existing conditions will no longer stop someone from being covered but the penalties for not having coverage will be small.

The bill prohibits insurance companies from refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and from charging sick people higher premiums. [1] It attempts to offset the costs this will impose on insurance companies by requiring everyone to purchase coverage, which in theory would expand the pool of paying policy holders.

However, the maximum fine for those who refuse to purchase health insurance is $750. [2] Even factoring in government subsidies, the cost of purchasing a plan is much more than $750. The result: many people, especially the young and healthy, will simply not buy coverage, choosing to pay the fine instead. They’ll wait until they’re sick to buy health insurance, confident in the knowledge that insurance companies can’t deny them coverage. Such a scenario is a perfect storm for increasing the cost of health care and creating an unsustainable mandate program.

Like the conclusion of the Price WaterHouse study, Palin concludes that young people will simply not get insurance until they get sick. This will drive up costs for everyone and thus only make health care even more expensive. It's important to note that in demonizing the likes of Palin and the insurance companies no one has answered this charge. No one has been able to say how this assessment is wrong, and that's because it isn't. The administration claims that subsidies and credits aren't factored into the formulation. That's absurd. Neither subsidies or credits are free and neither bring down the cost of health insurance. All it does is move the cost from one party to another. This is the biggest flaw in the Baucus bill. It can't be fixed. If Baucus' bill raises the fees and penalties that would be a massive new tax. Covering those with pre existing conditions sounds great in theory but in reality, there are major flaws in this scheme.

Beyond this, Palin also criticizes the president's hypocritical lack of transparency.

In January 2008, presidential candidate Obama promised not to negotiate behind closed doors with health care lobbyists. In fact, he committed to “broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are. Because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process. And overcoming the special interests and the lobbyists...” [12] However, last February, after serving only a few weeks in office, President Obama met privately at the White House with health care industry executives and lobbyists. [13] Yesterday, POLITICO reported that aides to President Obama and Democrat Senator Max Baucus met with corporate lobbyists in April to help “set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform.” [14] Needless to say, their negotiations were not broadcast on C-SPAN for the American people to see.

It's often difficult for people to see how corrosive non transparency is. That's because there is no direct effect from non transparency to people's lives. After all, if a bill helps you, do you really care if it was done transparently. Instead, non transparency corrodes the system until the system itself stops helping the masses and helps the special interests. People need to understand that these bills are over 1000 pages. So, unless everyone is going to read and fully analyze them all, they need to know how someone came to the decision they did. When deals are made behind closed doors, then deals are made that benefit the deal makers and not the public. That's what is happening now. Once the process is corrupted, the bill is no longer viable. That's what we have now.

All of these points Palin made as well. Palin once again renewed her support for free market ideas. I continue to be surprised that Palin didn't try to take the lead in debating health care reform. Her contributions have been at the margins. Everytime she made a contribution it wasn't merely debated but hyperanalyzed. Death panels became a part of the lexicon. Yet, she makes a contribution every few weeks rather than on a regular basis. She could have gotten a lot more involved. Palin said one of the reasons she stopped being Governor was to support conservative people and ideas. This was the perfect platform for that. She's stuck one foot in the water but to be taken seriously, she needs to get deep into the fight.