The Health Security Bill spells out the troubling answer. A National Health Board—seven people appointed by the president—will decide how much the nation can spend on health care each year. Based on that budget, the board puts price caps on premiums to limit the money paid into the health care system (pages 252, 974-977). If medical needs exceed that budget and premium money runs low, the bill requires state governments and insurers to make "automatic, mandatory, nondiscretionary reductions in payments" to doctors, nurses and hospitals are slashed, as the bill requires? New York City hospitals, which operate with only four days' cash on hand, would experience life-threatening shortages: nurses working without pay, medications withheld because of cost.
The Politics of Health Care: Nine Case Studies of Innovative Planning in New York City