The non-revenue side of health reform

Naturally, I’m ecstatic that health care reform has passed and that we’re increasing taxes for about half of the bill’s cost. So this is  a great step towards our society’s realization of basic fairness, but it’s important to realize that half the problem, high and higher costs, is still unresolved.  As the Tax Policy Center explains, senior citizens and our government are basically between the economy and the health care sector, i.e. medical costs are way too high.  As Atul Gawande series of New Yorker articles demonstrated, the health care bill has so many initiatives that it should lower overall health care costs in the long-term, and the bill’s ability to bend the curve will be the ultimate judgment of its impact.  By bringing more people into the health insurance market, the bill will increase pressure for fundamental cost reform sooner than the status quo would have.  The more that the entire political class is forced to confront costs within the rubric of near-universal care, the quicker our fiscal disaster will rectify itself.