Obama Town Hall: We Need Reform

I just finished watching the town hall Obama held in Montana. I felt he did a much better job than the one he held earlier this week. I actually agreed with many of the things he said. For example, insurance companies should not be allowed to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions and that the healthcare system is definitely in need of reform.

I am still skeptical of his plan, mainly on the issue of the cost of the plan. I don't see how they can expand coverage to 47 million American without it costing trillions of dollars. The average annual cost of insurance for a single person is about $4,700 per year. Using this average, take 47,000,000 people uninsured times $4,700 and you get a cost of $220.9 billion per year. Over ten years this amounts to about $2.2 trillion, without taking into account rising costs (i.e., if they can keep health care premiums from rising at all during the next 10 years a task I find unlikely to be achieved). To give some idea about how much $220.9 billion per year is, the U.S. government will spend about $651.2 billion on defense this year.

Obama stated that 2/3's of the costs would be covered by making the healthcare system more efficient and that the government would only have to raise about $50 billion in addition revenue per year. I find these numbers quite dubious. I think best case scenario the plan will cost about $2 trillion over the next 10 years.

Also, during the town hall meeting it seemed like Obama and Dems were backing away from a public option. The public option was one of the mechanisms to control costs.

I would be in favor of a healthcare plan that is paid for by cuts in other government programs. I would not be in favor of a healthcare plan that is not paid for or one which would be paid for by rising already high taxes on the American people. Also, the costs of the plan have to be realistic numbers; the numbers that the CBO is putting out are unrealistically low.

I think some form of healthcare reform will be passed this year because the Republicans have no more credibility than the Democrats. My biggest fear is that it will not be paid for or that the government will drastically underestimate its cost.

We cannot continue to run up high deficits and expect that America will not go bankrupt some time down the road.