With Democratic support coalescing around Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care reform proposal, passage of a comprehensive overhaul now appears more likely than ever.  Opponents had their summer of protests.  But, Democrats have shown a renewed sense of energy since discrediting Sarah Palin’s “death panels” and Sen. Charles Grassley’s claim that ObamaCare would “pull the plug on grandma.” Still, while those charges may have been a little overwrought, there is plenty to be concerned about with the Democratic health reform…

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Last week, after the industry association America’s Health Insurance Plans released a study showing that premiums would rise 18 percent under the Senate Finance Committee’s reform proposal, top Democrats took to the airwaves to condemn the industry for standing in the way of health care reform.  President Obama used his Saturday radio address to accuse the industry of using “deceptive and dishonest” attacks to derail reform legislation.  And Obama and congressional Democrats threatened to repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which exempts insurers from most…

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The Senate Finance Committee, by a 15 to 8 vote, rejected an amendment proposed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) to Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care bill that would have added a government-run, or ”public,” health insurance option to the overhaul proposal.  Joining all ten of the committee’s Republicans in voting “no” were five Democrats, including Baucus himself, Bill Nelson (Fla.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), and Thomas Carper (Del.).  A second, and slightly less bad ”public option” amendment, sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)…

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The National Journal had an interesting article this week describing the difficulty Democrats have been having getting young adults interested in the health care debate.  Two-thirds of voters 18 to 29 pulled the lever for Barack Obama last November, and over 40 percent of the uninsured are young adults age 18 to 34.  So, the Dems assumed they would be big proponents of the Obama agenda, including his hallmark proposal on health reform.  It turns out, though, that America’s youth were…

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A new study published in the journal Health Affairs calls into question claims by congressional Democrats and President Obama that mandatory coverage of preventive care services in public and private health insurance programs will lead to substantial cost savings.  The study looks specifically at diabetes care, an expensive to treat chronic condition, the worst side-effects of which can often be mitigated by early intervention and more coordinated care. It is often assumed that more and better preventive care could substantially lower…

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There was a good front page article in yesterday’s Washington Post on the history of advances in medical science and technology.  The conclusion:  Although the costs of treating many serious medical conditions has risen dramatically over the course of the last few decades, most of these cost increases have come hand-in-hand with significant improvements in health outcomes.  Take the article’s discussion of the evolving treatment of heart attacks:

“When I was in medical school, about all we had to offer was oxygen,…

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Best line this week — should be a slogan for health care debate: “If you like public housing, you will love public health care.”

Read the opinion piece “Parsing the health reform arguments” by George Newman in the Wall Street Journal today for concise rebuttals of oft-repeated claims about government health plan.

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