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Congress is hard at work this summer drafting legislation to reform the U.S. health care system. However, policymakers are fixated on an effort to expand health insurance coverage and are doing nothing to contain rapidly rising health care costs or reduce wasteful spending on ineffective treatments. As a result, any effort to implement universal health care will become unsustainable within a matter of years. The leading proposals will expand health insurance coverage by reducing eligibility requirements for Medicaid, subsidizing the purchase of health insurance policies for those with limited incomes, and perhaps even introducing a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of these reforms to exceed $1 trillion over the next 10 years.
