Helping Health Reform with Hulu

After reviewing some of the plans for U.S. health care system reform proposed by the House and the Senate this week, I wonder if the representatives in Congress should go back to graduate school.

In grad school I learned some valuable penny pinching techniques. After paying tuition, there wasn't much left over for fancy groceries, travel expenses, or entertainment so I ate ramen, carried a bus schedule, and traded my cable company for Hulu. Although I'm not in a hurry to return to grad school life, the experience taught me how to cut costs.

The health care reform proposal authors in the House and Senate seem to have missed this lesson. Their reform bills pay little attention to health care cost reduction. Rather the proposals focus on developing new ways to distribute those dollars - including a government-run insurance option to compete with private insurers.

Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, agrees. Elmendorf and his colleagues at the CBO crunch the financial numbers for legislators and estimate the costs of new laws. According to their analyses, instead of decreasing costs the new proposals will actually increase health care financial outlays.

The lack of cost-conscious measures in the health reform proposals is unfortunate in a country that needs to focus on getting more out of each health care dollar. Maybe a letter to Rep. Pelosi about Hulu will help.