Evening Must-Read: Don Taylor on the Burr, Coburn, Hutch PCare Health Reform Plan

Don Taylor: Private Score of Burr, Coburn, Hatch Plan: “The rage machine that has been perfected to argue against the ACA could get plenty cranked up….

Burr, Coburn, Hatch… achieve coverage expansions via an increase in individual based coverage… at the expense of employer sponsored coverage… [via] ‘an influx of consumers enrolling in low-cost narrow network plans.’… On the overall federal budget… the action is achieved by the capping of the tax exclusion of employer sponsored health insurance…. Medicaid changes… yield around $150 Billion in savings over 10 years, and the savings from medical malpractice reform are essentially a rounding error….

Burr and Coburn missed a big opportunity in January 2010…. [With] Snowe… [and] Collins… [they] could have gotten a lot once Scott Brown was elected. Instead they choose full opposition, and gross over-statements in their arguments against the ACA, especially given the proposal they now put forth… create[d] and exacerbate[d] the political culture that will make it so hard for their proposal to be given the subtle, and nuanced listen that it deserves.

5-1 instead of 3-1 age premium bands. Continuous-coverage window to community rating instead of mandated purchase and community rating. A different and stricter cap on the tax-preference for employer-sponsored insurance. Definitely in the ACA family.

And that’s the problem for Burr, Coburn, and Hatch: If–as they have been saying for four years now–ObamaCare is Satan, then this is Beelzebub, if not worse.