Sen. Joe Lieberman is wrong.
He said the other day that we should reconsider healthcare reform until we can get our economic house in order. "There's no reason we have to do it all now," he said.
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Healthcare reform: We can pay for it now, or pay more later
Runaway costs and lack of universal coverage are intertwined problems, so we have to address them simultaneously -- and that'll cost some serious coin. But it's worth it.
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That seems like a reasonable stance, particularly in light of a White House estimate Tuesday projecting $9 trillion in budget deficits over the next decade.
But Lieberman's play-it-safe strategy could cost us a heck of a lot more over the long run.
"Without reforms, there's no reason to think that healthcare costs won't continue to rise unabated," said Rick Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions, a Washington think tank. "The costs of these reforms will go up considerably."
This is a sentiment echoed by many in the business community, who worry that steady increases in healthcare costs will eat into profits and undermine competitiveness.
"We should not put it off," said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization representing large employers that provide coverage for about 50 million workers, retirees and dependents. "We need healthcare reform now."
Extending health insurance to the 47 million people who now lack coverage will be expensive, there's no denying it. Current estimates place the tab somewhere near $1 trillion over 10 years.
But how much more expensive will it be down the road, as the ranks of the uninsured continue to grow and as the cost of treating such people in emergency rooms continues to soar?
What about the growing burden to families as employers increasingly reduce health benefits to control the hit to their bottom line?
How will people with sharply limited coverage handle a major illness or accident?
And as medical costs keep rising, what will happen when millions of baby boomers turn to Medicare for coverage, placing unprecedented strain on a program that's already projected to be trillions of dollars in the hole in coming decades?
"I have problems with the way this whole reform thing is going," said Alan Auerbach, director of the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at UC Berkeley. "I'd like to see a more explicit explanation of ways that medical costs are going to be controlled, and I'd like to see a more comprehensive way of paying for it.
"But if we don't do anything at all, we're clearly going to be worse off. The problems just get bigger if you don't do anything."
