WASHINGTON — What could be worse than health care overhaul? No health care overhaul.
It’s anybody’s guess whether President Barack Obama’s health remake will survive in Congress.
But there is no doubting the consequences if lawmakers fail to address the problems of costs, coverage and quality: surging insurance premiums, more working families without coverage, bigger out-of-pocket bills, a Medicare prescription gap that grows wider and deeper, and government programs that pay when people get sick but do little to keep them healthy.
Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an adviser to 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain, said: “No one has the luxury of saying we’re not going to worry about this.”
A look at how some major groups would fare if the health care overhaul collapses and present trends continue:
On the plus side, private insurance plans in the Medicare Advantage program, serving about one-fourth of seniors, would be spared cuts.
By 2019, the number of uninsured would rise to 54 million, most of them low-income workers. The Democratic bills would expand Medicaid to pick up more people near the poverty line, while providing subsidies for many middle-class households to buy private coverage.
Small companies are likely to keep dropping coverage, as are employers with lots of low-wage workers.
