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PriceWaterhouseCoopers has done an audit of the Baucus health care plan. The results aren’t pretty. Neither are they surprising:

Key Findings

• Health reform could have a significant impact on the cost of private health insurance coverage.
• There are four provisions included in the Senate Finance Committee proposal that could increase private health insurance premiums above the levels projected under current law:
  • Insurance market reforms coupled with a weak coverage requirement,
  • A new tax on high-cost health care plans,
  • Cost-shifting as a result of cuts to Medicare, and
  • New taxes on several health care sectors.
• The overall impact of these provisions will be to increase the cost of private insurance coverage for individuals, families, and businesses above what these costs would be in the absence of reform.
• On average, the cost of private health insurance coverage will increase:
  • 26 percent between 2009 and 2013 under the current system and by 40 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.
  • 50 percent between 2009 and 2016 under the current system and by 73 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.
  • 79 percent between 2009 and 2019 under the current system and by 111 percent during this same period if these four provisions are implemented.

In short, the Baucus plan makes a bad problem worse. The audit also observed that by 2019 most health plans (even the most basic ones) would face cost increases sufficient to subject them to the “Cadillac plan” tax.

(Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Graph added.

UPDATE: PriceWaterhouseCoopers is the largest and most respected of the auditing firms. But now they’ve been marked as enemies of the people:

Democrats and their allies scrambled on Monday to knock down a new industry-funded study forecasting that Senate legislation, over time, will add thousands of dollars to the cost of a typical policy. “Distorted and flawed,” said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass. “Fundamentally dishonest,” said AARP’s senior policy strategist, John Rother. “A hatchet job,” said a spokesman for Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

(Via Power Line.)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.