A common mistake is claiming that the Affordable Care Act will bring “universal health care” to the United States. Ryan Lizza’s makes this claim in his defense of President Obama at the end of his long story in the New Yorker, but insurance is not care, and the ACA’s insurance coverage isn’t universal.

The media are finally waking up to the fact that the temporary high-risk pools created by the new health-care law were completely unfunded. Only $5 billion was set aside for the program, which is probably less than a third of what would be required to keep the program funded until 2014. This should not be news to Congress or people closely following the health-care debate. Back in December 2009, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) clearly concluded, “By 2011 and 2012 the initial $5 billion in Federal funding for this program [high risk pools] would be exhausted.” A fact FDL chose to highlight.

Ezra Klein attempts to rebut Jane’s reasons for opposing the bill. Many of his arguments are weak at best.

The sole defense of this massive corporate giveaway, formally known as the Senate health care reform bill, is that it would still do some “good,” helping millions of the uninsured. Unfortunately, the bill would dramatically worsen the quality of current insurance coverage for tens of millions Americans, thanks to the new excise tax on insurance plans. It is unlikely that any of the remaining “good” in this bill will outweigh the massive amount of harm.

The new excise tax on employer-provided health insurance will result in most people getting worse health insurance from their employer, insurance that covers less. That is just not my conclusion, it is the conclusion of the CMS.

Nancy Pelosi may not have enough votes for the “robust” public option tied to Medicare rates plus 5%. The Hill has published the official whip count [note: The Hill has now removed this page. Data was copied and posted here] of those House Democrats who oppose the robust public option. As I’ve pointed out countless [...]

It is not just unlikely that current health care reform bills, without a public option, will fail to provide millions of more people with quality affordable private health insurance–I fear such reform will make it impossible to them to get quality affordable health insurance.