The CD Position on Health Care Reform
Thursday, December 17th, 2009The Democrats in Congress are currently trying to jam an unpopular version of health care reform down the throats of the American people. The reasons that this version is so unpopular are numerous and include its increased costs, rationed care, and its expansion of the government’s power over our lives. At one time or another, there were at least 5 different versions of this proposed legislation floating around the Congress looking for approval. The proposal which came out of the House was just under 2,000 pages long; the Senate proposal is currentl around 2,100 pages long. Also, it seems that almost nobody in either House of Congress has read either bill.
Yet, they want to have something passed by the end of the year, if not sooner. Why? Some on the left have suggested that it has to be passed because it is “historic” and may not survive to be passed later. Seeing as this is Obama’s big issue, Democrats also want it passed so that Obama doesn’t look weak. Obama has said that if it isn’t passed, the country will go bankrupt:
The president laid out a dire scenario of what will happen if his health care reform effort fails.
“If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,” he said. “Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year.“
The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an “unsustainable” trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, “the federal government will go bankrupt.”
Now Obama is worried about the country going bankrupt — after spending trillions of dollars we don’t have on government spending which will not create jobs or grow the economy. After tripling the national debt and spending tax revenue which won’t be collected for decades to come.
The problem with the Democrats’ proposals is that they do not incorporate common-sense approaches to reducing costs and increasing coverage. Instead, they use government-mandated purchase provisions to force people, whether they want it or not, to buy coverage, while driving private-sector insurance providers out of business by forcing them to compete with a government-subsidized government plan.
Before doing anything as drastic as has been proposed, the Congress should do three things to reform health care:
- Eradicate government regulations which prevent private insurance companies from selling on a national basis.
- Institute tort-reform to reduce the skyrocketing cost of litigation.
- Increase efforts to find and eliminate Medicare fraud.
Allowing insurance companies to operate nationally will quickly bring down the cost of insurance to consumers by increasing choice in the marketplace. Lowering the cost of insurance premiums is the key to increasing coverage of the uninsured. Tort-reform will also reduce the cost of insurance premiums by placing limits on the cash settlements and attorney’s fees that can be won in litigation. Finally, eliminating fraud is just a good idea all around. These three ideas could eliminate billions of dollars in costs without costing the taxpayer anywhere near what is currently proposed.
Once these three steps are taken, then we can look at other, more drastic options as are currently being proposed by the Democrats in Congress.
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December 21st, 2009 at 12:49 am
Unpopular?? How do you define unpopular? Legislation that has to win 60 percent of the vote as it has to because of the Republicans’ insistence on filibustering everything can hardly be called unpopular. I guess if 60 percent is unpopular that would make Ronald Reagan unpopular in 1984 when he was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote.
And don’t quote a bunch of meaningless polls right now. The only poll that counts is the one held just one year ago when Democrats wiped the floor with Republicans across the board in the national elections – and when health care reform was a key issue in the race.
Ramming it down their throats??? They have been debating this legislation for over a year. And the issues themselves have been debated for more than 15 years.
Increased costs?? The Congressional Budget Office says the legislation will reduced the deficit by $132 billion over 10 years. It is the biggest single piece of deficit reduction legislation in decades. And it will expand covereage to another 31 million people.
“…after spending trillions of dollars we don’t have on government spending…”
What are you talking about? The $787 billion stimulus that created or saved 640,000 jobs? The bailout funds (approved during the Bush administration) that helped stabilize our financial system are which is now being paid back with interest???
You think a “common sense” solution is to deregulate the insurance industry like they did with the banks and the savings and loans? That’s insane.
Fortunately, we are going to get health care reform this time like it or not and it will be interesting to see how poor Republicans’ memories will be as their dire predictions of doom and gloom fade away like they did in 1993 after predicting economic catastrophe with Bill Clinton’s first budget right before the longest economic boom in our nations’ history. My only question is has there ever been a time when Republicans got it right? I can’t think of any.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:22 pm
55% of likely voters in the latest Rasmussen Poll are opposed to this monstrosity; that’s how I define unpopular. This bill is so unpopular with Democrats in the Senate, that Harry Reid has had to literally buy the votes needed to pass it.
Why is it they are only meaningless when they don’t support your position?
If the majority of the American people don’t want something, and the President along with his henchmen in Congress legislate it anyway, yeah, they’re shoving it down the people’s throats. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve debated about it; it is being forced upon a majority of people who don’t want it.
Common sense says that you cannot add 31 million people to anything and end up spending less on it than you are now. All of these “savings” are based upon pie-in-the-sky estimates of how much fraud will be eliminated and how much money will be saved by managing (that is, denying) care under the new system. The deficit will do nothing but continue to grow under this administration.
Dude, you’re high if you think that 640,000 number is anywhere near reality. There is no way for anyone to count how many jobs were “saved”, let alone attribute the savings to a specific government policy. Besides, the unemployment rate is now 10% or more, which means that there has been a net loss of jobs. The “stimulus” was nothing more than Obama giving his friends money to spend on pork projects.
Your arrogance only highlights your ignorance.
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:27 am
Polls are meaningless right now whether they agree with my position or not. The only poll that mattered was the one held a year ago November.
By all rights, health care reform should have passed easily long ago because a clear majority of elected representatives support it in both legislative bodies. But because of the Republicans’ abuse of the filibuster it has become nearly impossible to get any legislation passed today. The fact that the health care bill was finally able to secure the super-majority necessary to break the Republican filibuster even in the face of all the lies being spewed daily by Rightwing Hate Radio, the Mooney Times and Faux News is quite remarkable in my opinion.
Why don’t you join with me and support the elimination or at least a major scaling back of the filibuster rule. If you believe Repubicans are going to win back control soon, then it would be a good thing for them as well. I’m not afraid of majority rule. Are you?
You can call it “pie in the sky” if you want to, but the CBO has a pretty good track record on budget projections such as this, unlike say Republicans who are consistently wrong in everything they predict.
The bailout (TARP) and the stimulus have both been very successful at stemming the losses from Bush’s massive economic failure. Bush and the Republicans screwed things up royally and left a HUGE mess for the Democrats to clean up… And they have been trying to block them at every turn in their efforts to clean up the mess! The Bush/Republican catastrophe is the worst the country has seen since the Republicans and Herbert Hoover nearly destroyed capitalism by causing the Great Depression.
Clearly anyone who would support putting Republicans back in power today is the one who is being ignorant… ignorant of history.
December 22nd, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Wow. Just wow. Polls show what the people (you know, those who the President is supposed to represent) are thinking now. Last November, people voted for the idea of health care reform, because, as is usual for Obama, he didn’t have a clue what would end up in the bill. Now that the people have seen what is going into the bill, they’re against it (which is probably why Obama didn’t release any details to begin with). Passage of this bill will guarantee that Obama will be a one-term President, as well as guaranteeing that the Democrat majorities in the Congress will disappear in 2010.
The filibuster is a time-honored tradition in our form of government. It is there to ensure that the minority view is heard. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to eliminate it.
Jeez. What’s next, you going to challenge me to fight on the playground?
History as in… the Carter Administration (high inflation, skyrocketing gas prices, and the worst foreign policy in the country’s history)? As far as Clinton and the economic boom, any fool knows that the Congress is who spends the money and creates the budget, and for most of Clinton’s term of office the Congress was controlled by the Republicans. The only thing Clinton did was sign what they gave him.
If you want to see what America will look like should the Obama Administration last 8 years, look at Detroit. Under Democrat control since 1961, and now it is an economic wasteland.