Yesterday, during a Congressional hearing on health care reform, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) challenged health care crisis denier Sally Pipes on her academic credentials. Pipes assured Braley that she was indeed a health care “scholar” who had been published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs:

BRALEY: Have you published any peer reviewed treatises in a journal of economics on health care policy?
PIPES: Yes.

BRALEY: Can you give us some examples?

PIPES: I’ve done some things in Health Affairs over the past and –

BRALEY: But can you just identify the scholarly journal that’s a peer reviewed journal of economics?

PIPES: Well, Health Affairs is, I think. I don’t know whether you would say it is.

UNINDENTIFIED: It’s peer reviewed.

Listen:

Searching ‘Pipes’ in the author field of the Health Affairs website yields one result — a Letter to the Editor titled ‘Piping A Different Tune.’ In the letter, Pipes responds to what she describes as a “hostile” book review of Who Killed Health Care: America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem–and the Consumer Driven Cure:

The author of the review responds to Pipes, highlighting her not-so-academic approach to policy: “Sally Pipes’ riposte to my review of Regina Herzlinger’s book, Who Killed Health Care, offers rhetoric and faith-based posturing but little evidence. Whilst it can be intellectual fun and politically advantageous to repeat the principles of bottom-up, makret oriented health care, the practice is usually inflationary, inefficient, and inequitable.”

President Obama’s budget allocates $634 billion towards health care reform, a good start, but it’s certainly not enough to reach universal coverage. Today, the AP interviewed health care policy experts who estimate that “the Obama proposal to expand health insurance to all U.S. residents could cost about $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years“:

John Sheils, a senior vice president of the Lewin Group, said about $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion would be a credible estimate for a plan that commits the nation to covering all its citizens. That would amount to around 4 percent of projected health care costs over the next 10 years, he added.

Recently, Sens. Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) argued that the administration should not invest new money into an already bloated health care care system, suggesting instead, that Obama could somehow surgically remove the $700 billion in waste and reinvest that amount into reforms.

$1.5 trillion isn’t chump change, but it’s nothing if compared to the full cost of inaction. A $1.5 trillion plan (much of it paid for, just like the President’s $634 billion allocation) is meant to bend the curve on health care spending. Otherwise, total health spending will double “by 2020– rising from a projected $2.6 trillion in 2009 to $5.2 trillion by 2020 to consume 21 percent” of the GDP.

As premiums increase over time, millions of Americans will lose their jobs, many more will forgo coverage, file for bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs, and die due to complications from being uninsured.

Reform cost estimates are large numbers only if we strip them of their human context and future cost projections.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers and prominent veterans groups are outraged over an Obama administration proposal — currently under consideration — to allow third-party insurance companies to pay for combat-related injuries. The proposal would “save the Department of Veterans Affairs $530 million a year,” but critics argue that asking private insurers to pick up the tab for combat injuries is not just immoral but also economically disastrous. The private insurers could jack up premiums, families could lose coverage if a veteran meets the maximum benefit amount for their insurance, and insurers could deny claims if a veteran is insured through the individual market, deny coverage etc…

The episode highlights the inadequacy of the nation’s patchwork health system and the dangers of skyrocketing health care costs in the private insurance market. Outraged Republicans are also suggesting that access to affordable health care is more important than balancing budgets! (Bodes well for the health care debate, right?)

But the party of ‘country first’ now finds itself in a peculiar political position. While loudly and proudly caricaturing the administration’s health care proposal as government-run socialism, Republicans are tripping over themselves to keep veterans in the system.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), who sits on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, demonstrates this hypocrisy:

On Veterans Leaving Government-Run Health Care: “If this bill reaches the Senate, I will strongly oppose it. The VA was created for the purpose of caring for those who have fought and sacrificed for our country, and the care for injuries sustained while serving is our responsibility.”

On The Consequences of Government-Run Health Care: “In short, government-sponsored health care will do for the health care economy what government-sponsored mortgages did to the housing market. The unintended consequences of government-sponsored health care would be catastrophic.”

On The Consequences of Obama’s Proposal: “If one side wins, one can expect the federal government to take over more of the responsibility of health care. To actually place the government in between a patient and their doctor. I’m not sure that’s what the majority of Americans want. I think they want a private sector that works for them as individuals, them as employers.

As Uwe Reinhardt asked during yesterday’s health hearing before the House Committee On Commerce and Energy, “Why do you give veterans socialized medicine when it’s so bad?” It’s a question Republicans are now struggling to answer.