Michael Hiltzik: The doughnut hole in the healthcare debate

That would be the Republican Party.

It should be clear by now to anyone who has followed the healthcare debate in Washington that effective reform must include several basic elements: universal coverage to create as broad and diverse a pool of enrollees as possible; prohibition of pre-existing coverage exclusions to prevent insurers from cherry-picking only healthy customers; and mandates for minimum coverage of such services as maternity, mental health treatment, preventive care, and hospitalization to ensure that policies are broad, effective and non-discriminatory.

As my Sunday column observes, the Republicans at Thursday's healthcare summit clung instead to the same tired nostrums: "tort reform," which will have a minimal effect on healthcare costs at best but will close the courthouse door to potentially millions of deserving, injured plaintiffs; and the sale of policies across state lines, which will make the health insurance business look like the credit card business -- free to mulct customers based on rules promulgated by the most anti-regulation states in the union. If you love how your credit card company treats you, then you'll really love health insurance, GOP-style.

The degree to which cant and ignorance has infected the healthcare reform debate is truly sickening. This week I received an e-mail from a reader who maintained that the reform legislation passed by the House and Senate entailed "a massive government take over" of the healthcare system. Only someone who gets his information solely from talk-radio or talk-TV lunatics could describe the bills that way. Here is the House bill text and extensive background as passed in November. Here is the Senate bill text and extensive background. I challenge anyone to find a "massive government take over" anywhere in either one.

The column starts below.

Angela Braly can?t kid me.
When the chief executive of gargantuan health insurer WellPoint (parent of Blue Cross of California) went before a congressional subcommittee the other day, she displayed all the smile-through-the-tears pluck of Annie looking to a sunny tomorrow or Scarlett swearing to God she?ll never be hungry again.
WellPoint didn?t really want to jack up health premiums on its customers by as much as 39%, she said ? it had no choice. ?We care deeply about our California customers,? she said.
But I understood that what she was really telling the committee members was this: ?Please put us out of our misery.?

Read the whole column.

-- Michael Hiltzik