Health Care Reform will lower premiums...

The Congressional Budget Office (the official government scoring agency) reported that they estimated the cost of an individual low-cost plan in the exchange to be $5,300 in 2016. This is a plan with an "actuarial value" (roughly, the share of expenses for a given population covered by insurance) of 70 percent. In their September 22 letter to the Senate Finance Committee, the CBO projected that, absent reform, the cost of an individual policy in the nongroup market would be $6,000 for a plan with an actuarial value of 60 percent. This implies that the same plan that cost $6,000 without reform would cost $4,540 with reform, or almost 25 percent less.

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The major aspects of this reform took place in 2007, notably the introduction of large subsidies for low-income populations, a merged nongroup and small group insurance market, and a mandate on individuals to purchase health insurance. And the results have been an enormous reduction in the cost of nongroup insurance in the state: The average individual premium in the state fell from $8,537 at the end of 2006 to $5,143 in mid-2009, a 40 percent reduction, while the rest of the nation was seeing a 14 percent increase.

Link embedded.

Late last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its initial analysis of the health-care reform plan that Republican Minority Leader John Boehner offered as a substitute to the Democratic legislation. CBO begins with the baseline estimate that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won't have health-care insurance in 2010. In 2019, after 10 years of the Republican plan, CBO estimates that ...17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won't have health-care insurance. The Republican alternative will have helped 3 million people secure coverage, which is barely keeping up with population growth. Compare that to the Democratic bill, which covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population to 4 percent.

But maybe, you say, the Republican bill does a really good job cutting costs. According to CBO, the GOP's alternative will shave $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. The Democrats, CBO says, will slice $104 billion off the deficit.

The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/11/congressional_budget_office_th.html

Put your hands on my health care please...:>>

[GCTMT]

They didn't actually have a plan. It was nothing more than saying, "look at us, we care about health care too".

Too little.. tooo late I'm afraid.

Link embedded.

Have you spoken with the people of Massachusetts lately?

The study is linked by the OP....

Have you spoken with the people of Massachusetts lately?

The problem (one of many, I should say) with the MA plan is that they didn't go with a public plan, it's all through the private insurance companies.

[Katie82, RN]

I have heard arguments on both sides of this issue. As I see it, the public option could go one of two ways: either the competition from the public option could cause premiums to decrease or insurance plans could chuck it all, allow themselves to be driven out of business and branch out to making big bucks administering the public option under a government contract like BC/BS does for Medicare now....