Health Care Reform: A Cynical View of Where We'll End Up :)

Click here for the entire series, this is part 4/4.

I expect the following things to happen in the health care reform debate in America:

1. 20-40 million people will have access to better health insurance at moderate cost to themselves, and another 300 million Americans will be abused less by their insurance companies when they get sick. This is a very good thing. But it's only a very good thing when compared against the (horrible! terrible! omg wtf!) status quo.

2. In exchange for this, everyone in America will be forced to buy insurance policies that support a broken model of health care. Whether they will be forced to buy public insurance or private insurance is consequential, but not as much as Democrats like to believe.

3. The rate of growth in health care costs will be slowed down a bit, but costs will continue to grow well beyond the rate of inflation/deflation. As unscrupulous marketers know, good health (or the illusion thereof) is something people are willing to pay dearly for even in a down economy.

4. Fundamentally, nothing will change. There's far too much money involved in health care, and the American government is far too dependent on corporate dollars to rock the boat very hard. The trends outlined in a previous article will continue.