While President Obama and others started off with bending the cost curve, most health economists agree, regardless of political predisposition, that none of these bills do that trick well. And the Senate is proving this out – as they passed an amendment over the weekend brought to the fore by Senator Boxer – which would require plans to cover mammograms and certain tests like that, regardless of the science – FOR FREE. As if there is a “for free” in health care.

In an article on theKaiser Health NewsWeb site, James Capretta a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center writes -”In recent days, a growing chorus of voices has expressed alarm that the health care legislation emerging in Congress does not come close to “bending the cost-curve” as President Obama has promised it would. David Broder and Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post, David Leonhardt in the New York Times and Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal have all, to varying degrees, said the health care plans being developed by Congressional Democrats would vastly expand governmental health care commitments without fundamentally altering the arrangements that today push costs rapidly upward every year.

Now, top officials in the Obama administration are pushing back hard with their own “narrative” on the cost-containment potential of the health care bills in Congress. Specifically, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag and Director of the Office for Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle contend in a series of recent interviews that the health care plan introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is more than sufficient to meet the “bend the curve” test. Their views have been echoed by MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber, who has been arguing that the Reid bill contains every conceivable idea to slow the pace of rising costs. And Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic has hailed Senator Reid’s legislation as a “milestone” in the health reform journey because of its superior cost-control provisions.”

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