The House Bill and Health Care Costs

Back when I was in the newspaper business, there used to be a kind of story that we called a “clip and save”–a clear, concise explanation of something that you wanted to keep handy for reference as you wrote your own stories about a complicated subject. If there’s an internet equivalent of that for health geeks (and for voters trying to figure out whether they like the legislation that is in front of Congress), it’s this blog post by Jonathan Cohn. It looks at the question of whether the House health bill does enough to bring down costs. His answer: yes, no, maybe. Cohn acknowledges that all of this is something of a guess on everyone’s part, but he gives us a set of yardsticks by which we can measure this effectiveness of this bill and of all the other versions that are likely to emerge as the legislative machinery grinds forward.