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The key congressional committees have yet to introduce the legislation that will carry Democrats' hopes for "universal coverage"--i.e., a government guarantee that all Americans will have health insurance, if not access to actual medical care. But the leading Democratic reform proposals--the plan on which Pres. Barack Obama campaigned, the "Call to Action" white paper by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus of Montana, and the "Healthy Americans Act" proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon)--bear enough similarities that we can predict the shape that legislation will take. Indeed, they all bear a striking resemblance to the reforms that Republican governor Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts in 2006. 

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The Wall Street Journal
By GEORGE NEWMAN

The health-care debate continues. We have now heard from nearly all the politicians, experts and interested parties: doctors, drug makers, hospitals, insurance companies, even constitutional lawyers (though not, significantly, from trial lawyers, who know full well "change" is not coming to their practices). Here is how one humble economist sees some of the main arguments, which I have paraphrased below:

- "The American people overwhelmingly favor reform."

If you ask whether people would be happier if somebody else paid their medical bills, they generally say yes. But surveys on consumers' satisfaction with their quality of care show overwhelming support for the continuation of the present arrangement. The best proof of this is the belated recognition by the proponents of health-care reform that they need to promise people that they can keep what they have now.

- "The cost of health care rises two to three times as fast as inflation." 

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The Wall Street Journal, By BETSY MCCAUGHEY Last September Sen. Barack Obama promised that under his health-care proposal "you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves." On Monday, President Obama repeated that promise in a speech to the American Medical Association. It's not true. 

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