Curve bending

Marc Ambinder writes about the cost containment provisions of the Senate Health Reform bill. Sounds exciting, no? He quotes Jonathan Gruber, prominent health economics expert at MIT:

"I'm sort of a known skeptic on this stuff," Gruber told me. "My summary is it's really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try. They really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything is in here....I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn't have done better than they are doing."

My chief complaint about the Senate bill is that I think they make it deficit-friendly by being excessively stingy on insurance subsidies to middle income people. This is not nice, and is also politically dangerous: do Democrats really want to have to face a lot of middle class voters who are angry that the government is making them shell out thousands of dollars for health insurance that they don't think they need? Another problem is that the bill doesn't start providing health insurance subsidies until 2014. That's way too long to wait - they ought to get this puppy dog up and running by this time next year.