Daily Pulse: What About Universal Coverage?

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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October 15, 2009

Daily Pulse: What About Universal Coverage?

Walter Shapiro makes an important point: The political promise voiced by President Obama and virtually every leading figure in the Democratic Party has been "universal health care" -- but the bill coming out of the Senate Finance Committee falls far short of that. Estimates suggest that by 2015 it will achieve a coverage rate for Americans of just 94%.

"The underlying problem is that there is the lack of the political will in the Senate and the White House to spend enough money on subsidies to come close to achieving universal coverage. With Barack Obama publicly embracing a 10-year cost figure of $900 billion, and the White House worried about the political repercussions from a trillion-dollar price tag, the possibilities for maneuvering are limited. The central issue is not the deficit, since both pieces of legislation pay for themselves with new taxes and reductions in other types of federal health care spending. Rather, the difficulty is rooted in the politics of assembling a 60-vote filibuster-proof Senate majority and the atmospherics of appearing to contain health care spending in the midst of record red ink budgets."

With Senate leaders still trying to merge the Finance committee bill with a more liberal version passed by the health committee, there's still a chance the final bill will cover more Americans. But the only way to do it is to spend more money.

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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October 15, 2009