Aw: Obama gives up on containing health-care costs

Obama has put off a tax on high-cost health plans until 2018 — long after he’s out of office, even if he’s a two-termer.And in doing so, he’s essentially neutered the last significant Democratic push to control health costs.

When Obama launched his health care project, the case for reform rested on two pillars. One was helping people who had no insurance or were otherwise struggling with the current system. The other was taking dramatic steps to halt the growth in costs. As the debate lurches toward a close, the emphasis in Obama’s plan now rests overwhelmingly on the first pillar — with only the most modest and preliminary measures being embraced for cost control…

“This was designed to get more support from the Democratic Caucus. Not surprisingly, there’s higher overall costs and fewer steps to get the savings necessary to pay for those costs,” said Mark McClellan, a former Clinton and Bush administration official who is now a health care economist at the Brookings Institution.

The Cadillac tax is “really the main piece of getting down the cost of health insurance,” and Obama’s changes make it “significantly weaker,” he said.