editorial

Move ahead on health care reform

While many who oppose health care reform say they just want to keep things the way they are, maintaining the status quo is not an option. According to a Feb. 28 New York Times article, without reform, health care costs will continue to rise, with those costs passed on to consumers as increased premiums. While the average cost of health care for a family is currently $13,000 per year, in the next decade premiums are expected to nearly double, to $24,000. That amount equals about half of current median household income.

Due to the higher-priced premiums, an even greater percentage of Americans will join the uninsured, increasing that number from about 49 million today to between 57–66 million in 2019. And without insurance, the health of those uninsured Americans will suffer. According to the consumer advocacy group Families USA, as many as 275,000 people will die prematurely over the next decade because they lack insurance.

President Obama and the Democrats should pursue the one strategy currently available to pass health care reform, which is budget reconciliation.

Republicans, not surprisingly, are working hard to present this approach as unprecedented and inappropriate for significant legislation. They are wrong. Begun in 1974 as a way to prevent a minority party from obstructing critical national business, budget reconciliation is a way to bypass filibusters and pass legislation with a simple up/down majority vote. It’s already been used to pass significant measures, including both Bush tax cuts, welfare reform and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. While the Republicans are crying foul, they have in fact been the party most likely to use the strategy, initiating 16 out of the 21 budget reconciliation measures in the years between 1974 and 2008. And as a March 1 Washington Post blog by Ezra Klein points out, Democrats are not using the strategy to create new legislation. Rather, they would use it only to pass the 11-page list of modifications necessary to reconcile the complex reform measures already approved by the House and Senate.

Democrats not only have the opportunity to pass health care reform, but also the moral obligation to do so. For the sake of America’s health and economic well-being, this critical effort must go forward.

—Diane Chiddister