Here’s Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the education and labor committee, mocking the Republican health care plan in a very effective 90-second speech on the House floor on Saturday:
When he talks about the Republican plan “leaving people behind,” Miller is referring to the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the plan. The CBO found that the GOP plan would save money because it doesn’t actually extend insurance coverage to any of the 17 percent of legal, non-elderly Americans who the CBO thinks will be without health insurance in 2010. In fact, most of the Republican plan centers around reforms that would make the health insurance industry work more like the credit card industry by allowing insurers to base themselves in the state with the weakest regulations and then sell their health plans nationwide (as credit card companies already do from South Dakota).