Bob Laszewski’s Health Care Affordability Model has the same connection to the reality of the current battle over health care reform as a Fantasy Baseball League does to the actual outcome of a major league baseball game; i.e., none.
Actually, while those who play Fantasy Baseball – might we call them “baseball wonks”? – are affected by what happens in the real world to the players they have selected, they have no illusions of reciprocity. Laszewski is a brilliant analyst whose examination of the various political proposals for health-care reform have become a “must-read.” But in making his own proposal, Laszewski, a strategy consultant based in Washington, has managed to completely ignore the fact that reform is an intensely political process.
“The Health Care Affordability Model…could be attached to virtually any health care reform plan now on the table,” he writes.
No, it couldn’t. Just like managing a Fantasy Baseball team has no connection to managing real major league players. Given Laszewski’s timing, his proposal is somewhere between almost irrelevant and completely so. Which is not to say his ideas are wrong.
