Precious numbers

The new CBO projections are here! The new CBO projections are here! You try not to act like you're excited, but I can tell: you've had this marked on your calendar for some time. Yes, Max Baucus finally got his precious Finance Committee bill scored and we can all finally move on with seeing the Democratic caucus start really getting down to business on how exactly they'll screw all of this up. All the waiting, public plan denying, and negotiating with Republicans who still oppose the bill got Baucus a big fat savings of $8 billion to the budget per year over a 10 year period. Start the parade.

The good news, substantively and politically, is that CBO expects the measure would reduce budget deficits by $81 billion over the next decade and by even larger sums in the following decade.

The coverage news is not quite so good--although, to be honest, it's better than I expected, given the rumors running around today. CBO estimates that, as of 2019, 94 percent of legal non-elderly residents and 91 percent of all non-elderly residents would have insurance.
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And this is something we've known for a while: The Senate Finance bill isn't as generous or as protective as it ought to be.

So that's what all the fuss was about. The ability to say "Hey, this thing saves us $8 billion a year and costs less than the arbitrary number we picked out of a hat," not that it's the best bill, or most comprehensive, covers the most people, is the smartest, or does the most good. That it saves a relatively paltry sum of money that will invariably just get wasted on some weapons system no one wants. And in the end, all the people who are supposed to be convinced by the "reduces the budget" argument....won't vote for it. Oh and to get that number there has to be a random 15% subsidy cut two years into the plan that will make health care unaffordable again for a lot of people. But hey, the bill does do the three most important things that health care reform was supposed to do: provide political cover for "centrist" democrats, allow our elected betters to say that they did something, and keep the entire system pretty much unchanged. Mission accomplished.

Now the bill will soon go to the Senate whole where people are trying to convince those of us who are skeptical about...government in its entirety...will be made better by combining it with all the other better bills all the other committees passed 500 years ago. Then the bill will be made even extra betterer still when it goes to conference to be reconciled with a better House bill. To that I offer my hearty derisive laughter. Things improving with the full input of the Senate? Have you people learned nothing? Still, Baucus accomplished a politically helpful number and, in the end, isn't that more helpful than crafting the best bill possible? No? Well, you're going to have to convince yourself it is. I'm already attempting to do so myself.