By: Jon Walker Monday November 2, 2009 7:46 pm

The CBO estimates about the number of people who will use the public option could be very wrong. Of course that could depend on the risk adjustment mechanism in the exchange. That is a very real concerns, Ezra Klein worried by some things which aren’t.

Jane revisits the issues with Eshoo’s biosimilars amendment. The UAEM and AMSA respond to Eshoo defense of her amendment even though Waxman said her amendment has a real “evergreening problem.”

Sherrod Brown is trying to improve how reform deals with biosimilars. He worries the evergreening problem would led to an “endless monopoly period.”

Roland Burris is still claiming he will stand strong for the public option.

With the vote on the House bill expect soon House Progressives are pushing for improvements. One of these changes would be a better rating ceiling for the Public Option.

CBS does nothing while Lieberman tells lies on Face The Nation. Even though Lieberman has been trying to kill the public option, if it fails it would still ultimately be Harry Reid’s fault.

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One Response to “Monday Health Care Highlights”

khin November 2nd, 2009 at 8:10 pm

Of course, my estimates and the CBO estimates could both be way off. It is possible that the exchange will be a big success. By roughly year 4 or 5 (2016-2017), a large number of businesses (if not all) would start providing their employees with vouchers to purchase plans on the exchange. The low-hassle nature of the public option and larger provider network could make it very popular. It would not be surprising if it were selected by half the people using the exchange. In this scenario, the public option would have closer to 60 million customers, instead of 6 to 20 million.

The problem with this whole line of reasoning is the assumption that people will want to move to the exchange in the first place. But there are no advantages to the exchange as opposed to traditional employer based health insurance. The idea that it will grow as you suggest is completely unfounded, even if it were instantly opened to the entire US population. The only real reason anyone cared about this was the public option tied to Medicare rates, which is now gone. Now it doesn’t even matter if they open it, because there is nothing good in there anyway. It’s now more like the Commonwealth Connector in Massachusetts.