Senator Schumer’s Magical Plan for Health Care Compromise
Robert Moffit /
According to the May 5th New York Times, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) has proposed a health care reform “compromise” on the creation of a new public plan to compete with private health insurance. No doubt Schumer is trying to convince moderates that they should ignore Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) frank admissions that a public plan is just the first step of an unprincipled strategy to achieve government run health care.
Schumer’s compromise would require that the public plan and private plans would abide by the same rules and regulations. But even the NYT identifies some huge holes in his claim. Would the public plan be subject to state premium taxes, like private health plans, or state insurance laws, or solvency requirements with the private plans in states with which it is competing? Could the public plan be allowed to become insolvent? Or will it become another candidate for an eternal Congressional bail out? We have even more questions than the NYT does: (more…)