Gregg Deplores Millions of Uninsured Under Finance Bill
Uninsured
New Hampshire Union Leader
Joe Markman
Boston University Washington News Service
10/08/09
WASHINGTON – Lawmakers of all stripes believe the country needs need some kind of health care reform. But tactical arguments about cost and structure often leave behind the reality of what happens if no change is made.
On the heels of the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that the U.S. Senate Finance Committee health care bill would cost $829 billion over 10 years, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., criticized the measure for leaving behind millions of uninsured, despite its high cost.
“Considering that 25 million individuals will remain uninsured under this proposal,” Gregg said in a statement, “it does not solve our health care issues… while radically growing the size of the federal government.”
Yet according to a new study, 70,000 New Hampshire residents, under a worst-case scenario, would be without health insurance by 2019 if reform is not completed. The best conditions would leave 25,000 people uninsured. The report was released last week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute.
“Compared to a lot of other states New Hampshire is doing pretty well,” said Brian C. Quinn, a research manager at the foundation. “But even in a place like New Hampshire, if we fail to enact health care reform … as much as 18 percent of the population could be uninsured over the next ten years.”
The foundation is a nonprofit focused on health issues and the Urban Institute is a nonpartisan social and economics research center started in 1968 under the urging of President Lyndon Johnson.
The report concludes that New Hampshire individuals and families, under the worst economic conditions, would pay nearly $1.5 billion more for health care over the next decade without insurance reform and more than $900 million under the best scenario.
“There’s been a lot of discussion and disagreement about which policy options might work best and which ones would expand coverage the most and which ones would control costs,” Quinn said. “I think if you get caught up in that discussion you can lose sight of why it’s so important that we’re working towards health reform.”
Another study, released Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that promotes health care reform, rated New Hampshire’s health care system fifth best in the country, behind Vermont, Hawaii, Minnesota and Iowa.
Nationally, as many as 65.7 million Americans would be uninsured by 2019 without reform, compared to 46 million today, according to the Johnson Foundation and Urban Institute study.
“There’s not one member of Congress that I know of who thinks that the status quo is acceptable on health care,” said Robert E. Moffit, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies.
Like Gregg, Moffit argues that the way reform is being done is the problem, criticizing the Finance Committee bill for calling for “massive spending” while not effectively driving down the number of uninsured.
“It takes professionals to get a seven percent decrease in the number of uninsured and spend close to a trillion dollars doing it,” Moffit said.
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