Dearth of Details in Daschle-Dole Health Proposal

Robert Book / June 18, 2009

On Wednesday, the Bipartisan Policy Center – a group led by former senators Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole – released a report describing yet another health care reform proposal that would attempt a compromise between Democrats and Republicans. The proposal is billed as “the culmination of an inclusive year-and-a-half effort that included strategic outreach to key health care stakeholders, a series of state-based public policy forums, and months of personal deliberations by the Leaders.”

The proposal [PDF only] is a mixture of repackaged proposals of the past combined with some interesting new ideas. While it has a lot of advantages over the $1 trillion-plus-deficit Kennedy-Dodd bill, once again, like the Kennedy-Dodd bill, a lot of details are left unspecified. The details, of course, will determine whether this could lead to a truly positive advance, or an unmitigated disaster for American health care. (more…)