US healthcare: President Barack Obama’s US healthcare reform plan is close to becoming law. There are myriad winners and losers from the sweeping bill.
The winners include uninsured Americans of limited means who will receive subsidies to help pay for health insurance, which will now be mandatory for many — a requirement that may face constitutional challenge.
Meanwhile, insurance companies will have to offer affordable plans and will face an array of new consumer protection regulations. Despite its trade group spending nearly $9 million lobbying in 2009, the insurance industry will face upheaval and is widely touted as a loser from the bill. Big pharma can also chalk up a win. Politicians love to hate drug makers, but the $26 million the industry’s lobby groups spent last year has helped extend its protection against generic medicines and the re-importing of cheap drugs from Canada.
On the political front, Obama can claim a significant victory, probably leaving him unchallenged for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2012. After all, he appears to have delivered on a decades-long policy dream for his party. But Obama the centrist has taken a knock — there’s little that’s bipartisan in the bill.
That should boost Republican candidates in the midterm elections later this year by motivating their supporters. Then again, healthcare was always a win-win proposition for the GOP. Had Obama failed to pass a comprehensive bill, he and his party would have looked incompetent.
A final category of losers could be investors in US securities. On a narrow level, wealthy US investors will face a 4 percent surtax on investment returns, a measure designed to help pay for the reforms. More broadly, the bill doesn’t defuse the threat posed by rising healthcare costs to America’s long-term solvency. Official projections suggest that a decade from now, America will be spending 21 per cent of GDP on healthcare, more than the 18 per cent spent today.
That’s a reminder that the bill accomplishes only part of what Obama set out to do. Ensuring more Americans have better access to all kinds of care is a win. But punting the inevitable cost crunch down the road is a loss.
