Didn't read it carefully until I got home.
Basically bizzarro Obamacare. Enough erstwhile "free market" to maybe sell to the faithful as an improvement.
The ultimate point being that the only way it cuts costs is if subsidies are insufficient or if you assume that aggregate private insurance costs will come down in response. Ain't gonna happen. Probably the biggest question has to be the notion that subsidies to states for high risk pool for the uninsurable will be sufficent. Zero odds of that but a good way to dump the burden back on "those people*."
Probably would cut premiuns for the demographic that is overrepresented here- people in the individual market who don't have pre-existing conditions in their family and who previously qualified for cherry picked pools. Good politics there, as the greater burden has admittedly fallen on them. That would be until they develop an excludable condition and get dumped on the high risk pool. But I know that argument doesn't fly here.
Decent politics, though, pretty much us and them identity stuff.
* as far as "those people" goes, the odds that I'm going to turn black any time soon are small. The odds that I or a member of my family will develop an excludable condition are not. That would be despite the absence of obesity, poor diet or lack of exercise. I guess the ultimate and valid question is to what degree should healthy people be required to subsidize those who aren't. Or breaking that down further, to what degree should the (speculatively) half of the chronically or seriously ill who didn't contribute to their own condition through lifestyle be punished on account of the half that did?
I guess I'd favor something along the lines of HSA's. You can save up a few thousand a year if your luck holds and if it continues to hold you can cash in when you reach 65. But of course one serious illness or accident and it is all going to be gone.
