Expanding health care

House Democrats unveiled today a plan to let small businesses buy into the state's health care plan. By allowing these small businesses into the pool, the risk is spread out (hey, doesn't that sound like insurance?) so their costs are not as high. If a small business purchases health care and one of their employees gets sick, costs skyrocket, which doesn't sound like risk pooling to me.

I'd much prefer to see everybody in one pool, thus spreading the risk out among the largest possible population, but this is a start.

The Governor, of course, had to find fault with the plan, saying, "it would not address the key problem of rising health care costs for everyone." Hmm. How does Pawlenty think we should address the rising costs for everybody? High on his list of priorities is "tort reform," which will deal with that pesky 5% or less of health care spending, and will help those costs for about six months. Another brilliant idea is allowing stripped-down health care plans with fewer requirements, something which was tried before and had zero takers. Yeah, the governor is all about reducing health care costs, isn't he?