I got pushback on a post I put up yesterday critical of the health care reform bill from readers who pointed to the fact that folks like Paul Krugman and Al Franken were supporting it meant it must be at least OK.

Well, it isn’t, and don’t delude yourself into thinking that. Why did health insurance stocks rise to all time highs when the bill was passed?

This tidbit comes from reader Chuck S, and refers to the Senate version (the House version is pretty much certain to be made to conform to the Senate bill).

Yves here. This list still misses a few very bad features. For instance, most have fallen for the “preexisting conditions” bit, that the new plan is better because it forces insurers to cover those with preexisting conditinos. Well first, if you recall, insurers have used the failure to report ANY preexisting condition, no matter how trivial, as a reason to deny coverage when someone gets a costly illness. So health insurers will be permitted to charge those with “preexisting conditions,” again even if trivial, a 50% premium to the rest of the population. This not only defeats the idea of enlarging the pool, but also continues the abusive use of the notion of “preexsiting condition”. And before you argue that including all those people is costly and needs to be recouped somehow, every other advanced economy has a form of government-supported medicine that covers all citizens, is cheaper than ours, and delivers no worse, and in many cases, better health outcomes. Covering these people is not the problem; the problem is the system we now have.

Second, insurers that cross state lines get to be regulated by the state with the least regulations. Just as we saw with financial services, this will lead to a race to the bottom. For instance, I have a plan regulated by New York State, and New York State allows me to appeal to the state if I think I have been denied coverage incorrectly. Every time I have used this option, I have prevailed (and once, the NYS response was quite a smackdown to my insurer, Cigna). I’d lose this very valuable right under a new plan.

Third, Obama has engaged in a massive bait and switch. As Marshall Auerback pointed out,

From a Washington Post interview:

Obama said the public option “has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right.” But, he added, “I didn’t campaign on the public option.” Lots of links below the fold that appear to create a contradiction between the statement above and the actual facts. TomP’s diary – In the 2008 Obama-Biden health care plan on the campaign’s website, candidate Obama promised that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” [2008] – During a speech at the American Medical Association, President Obama told thousands of doctors that one of the plans included in the new health insurance exchanges “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market.” [6/15/09] – While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that “any plan” he signs “must include…a public option.” [7/17/09] – During a conference call with progressive bloggers, the President said he continues “to believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.” [7/20/09] – Obama told NBC’s David Gregory that a public option “should be a part of this [health care bill],” while rebuking claims that the plan was “dead.” [9/20/09]

Obama sees Reagan as one of his role models, but as my politically-minded buddies like to point out, Reagan sought to get and succeeded in winning 75-80% of what he wanted. Obama starts out with a much less ambitious ask and settles for at most 60%.