A Bit Off, But A Start

Sen. Baucus has released his idea for an amended health care proposal. For the most part, it's an improvement, but there are still a few kinks I'd like to see worked out:

1) The cost is still far too high. "Under $900 billion" could mean $899 billion. I don't believe that the resources they intend to use for funding will amount to that much over 10 years. Even Maxie said that that amount was too high in Obama's proposal, so his plan isn't changing that at all.

2) Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and changes for eligibility. Senior citizens and young cancer patients will shit all over him for that clause.

Other than that, this is a big improvement over the prior proposal. Baucus has changed the management landscape from a gov't-controlled program to one that is run by non-profit organizations. Takes our prodigious gov't out of the equation, and gives nice tax advantages for those org's, too.

If our country insists on having universal health care, at least this proposal will remove a great deal of gov't influence and will increase our taxes far less.