Morning Must-Read: ObamaCare and Burr-Coburn-Hatch PCare: Which Is Beelzebub and Which Is Satan Again?

Jonathan Cohn: People Who Hate Obamacare Would Hate the Republican Alternative Even More: “‘One of the great liberal conceits of the age is that to extend insurance coverage to the uninsured and make sure the sick do not fall through the cracks requires the centralized political management of the health sector’, says a triumphalist editorial in National Review. ‘The great service that Senators Coburn, Hatch, and Burr have performed is to explode that myth.’ Sound too good to be true? That’s because it is….

Early in the week, Coburn and his advisers suggested their plan included a large reduction in the existing tax break for employer-sponsored insurance. Then, on Wednesday, they announced that the reduction would be much smaller…. 

The trade-offs and downsides of the Patient CARE Act aren’t readily apparent right now… and that claims about what it can accomplish are not always what they seem. That’s most apparent when it comes to the core, most surprising statement the Patient CARE Act’s sponsors make—that, if implemented, it will reduce the number of uninsured Americans by roughly as much as Obamacare…. That’s based on assumptions the authors haven’t revealed and calculations from a model that sometimes produces very different results from those used by the Congressional Budget Office…. But even if the projection is correct… a significant number of those people will have skimpy coverage… be exposed to much greater financial risk than they would be under Obamacare…. “It doesn’t work if you’re poor or if you’re sick—other than that, it’s ok,” quips Jonathan Gruber….

To be clear, whether you think the Patient CARE Act is worse or better than the Affordable Care Act depends on how you value the pros and cons of each…. The authors of the Patient CARE Act and many of their allies are acting as if conservatives have some magic elixir for health care problems—a way to provide the same kind of security that the Affordable Care Act will, but with a lot less interference in the market and a lot less taxpayer money. It’s all the goodies of liberal health care reform, they imply, but without the unpleasant parts. They’re wrong.