The co-chairmen of President Obama’s deficit commission advanced a proposal that disappointed those of us who believe that the government has an important role in promoting a healthy and secure future for all of us. Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson recommend reducing the deficit by cutting back on important social programs such as Medicare and Social Security, while failing to recommend tapping obvious potential revenue sources in our upside-down economy. Two members of their committee, Jan Schakowsky and Alice Rivlin, have now released alternative proposals.

Medicare is already an inadequate program for our seniors and for individuals with long term disabilities. The commissioners are making an egregious mistake in framing the problem as a budget deficit that needs “hard choices” to reduce federal spending by shifting more costs to Medicare beneficiaries.

After reading Kevin Drum’s explanation of the federal deficit, it becomes even more obvious that all we have to do is improve Medicare, provide it for everyone, and then use its power as a monopsony serving the public good to bring the growth of health care costs to a manageable level. Compared to this, the other budget issues are a piece of cake.

Today, behind closed doors, the chairmen of President’s Obama’s deficit commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, presented to the other members of the commission their draft proposal for reform. The selections above, from their report, apply to health care.

The drive to divert the administration of publicly-financed health insurance programs to the private sector can be described at best as irrational fanaticism. The claim that private administration of public insurance programs uses market forces to improve quality and reduce costs has been disproven repeatedly. Costs of private administration are always higher, so any reductions in net spending are the result of curtailment of services.

President Obama now confirms what was obvious all along. A political decision was made to introduce the Republican model of health care reform, with the presumption that the Republicans would cooperate. The tragedy is not that it proved to be so costly politically, but rather that we are locked into a very expensive and quite ineffective model – the version that has now been abandoned by the Republicans.

The day after the decisive Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives some pundits are claiming that this shift in political power is, in part, due to the rejection of Obamacare – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This political message is not completely clear in that there was no national expression of what the public might want instead. But look at what the citizens of Massachusetts have to say.

Value-based insurance design generally refers to the drafting of insurance benefits in a way that would improve health care value. Under this concept, financial disincentives such as deductibles, copayments and coinsurance should be reduced or eliminated for health care that has been proven to be beneficial, whereas these cost-sharing measures should be increased for “expensive services and those for which the evidence is limited or controversial.” Is this a good idea?

Under the Medicare Part D program for prescription drugs, private insurers are paid more for lower-income subsidized patients with greater health care needs. Since the insurers find that the higher payments are still below what they find to be acceptable, they are setting their premiums at rates above the benchmark levels. This results in an automated transfer of these higher-cost beneficiaries to competitors’ programs.

This large study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research provides yet one more confirmation that the use of high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) continues to expand because of the very high cost of private health insurance, yet these high-deductible plans are causing patients to delay or decline necessary health care.