Opponents of health care reform should take little comfort from the senate meltdown over the Medicare buy-in and the public option being dropped. As Sally Pipes, writing in the New York Post points out, the bill still stinks:Take the "individual mandate," which would legally require everyone to buy insurance starting in 2013 or face a fine. Proponents claim that such a mandate is necessary to draw young, healthy people into the insurance pool, and so help bring down premiums for the old and sick, many of whom may not be able to find affordable coverage -- or so the argument goes. If Congress is going to force everyone to get insurance, it should also do its best to make sure that policies are affordable. Naturally, the Senate package does the opposite. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that individual insurance premiums would be 10 to 13 percent higher under the Senate bill than in the absence of reform.In New York, the situation would be even worse. One study...(Read Full Post)