California Conservative

The current hot topic is health care reform, with the Baucus bill getting the most focus recently. All the talk has centered around public option this and co-op that and mandate this other thing. Cindy has written a wonderful post about the Bennett disaster compromise as has Erick Erickson.

I’m thankful for the good writing that Erick and Cindy have done. Still, the emphasis shouldn’t be on the Baucus disaster or the Bennett disaster. It should be on what will produce the biggest cost savings, what will make portability the rule, not the exception and what will improve accessability.

I’m here to suggest that we’re starting with the wrong approach entirely. Before welfare reform was signed into law, extensive testing of approaches was conducted at the state level. Tommy Thompson and William Weld were the biggest innovators with regard to welfare reform.

By the time President Clinton signed welfare reform, we knew what stood the best chance of working. We knew because we’d put the principles to the test. The results had been scrutinized. The things that didn’t work were scrapped. The things that worked were emphasized.

The bills currently being considered are either a crapshoot (H.R. 3200) or they’ve been tried and failed (the Baucus and Bennett bills). Mandating coverage is nothing more than a hidden tax on the middle class. PERIOD. Taxing Cadillac plans hits union workers especially hard.

Bennett, Baucus and Waxman haven’t even had the decency to visit hospitals and clinics that are thinking outside the box and that are delivering high quality results at a fraction of the cost to find out why they’re achieving such great results.

They haven’t even bothered asking Gov. Tim Pawlenty about a state plan that union workers use that have kept premiums flat 2 of the last 5 years and raises minimal the other years.

Why haven’t Baucus, Bennett and Waxman asked insurance company executives what role government mandates play in driving up health insurance premiums? Why didn’t they talk with billing directors at hospitals and clinics to find out what bottlenecks they encounter? Why didn’t this trio talk with state legislators about legislation that they’ve gotten enacted that’s actually working?

There’s are reasons for these ‘oversights’. The biggest reason is that they each are afflicted with DC-itis, a mental disease that causes these men to think that all wisdom resides in a tiny section of DC. The next biggest reason for their coming up with inferior health care legislation is simple laziness. Had these gentlemen done their due diligence in finding what’s working and what isn’t, they coulld’ve crafted a much better bill that would’ve gotten much stronger support.

It’s time that We The People insisted on Congress start with the right approach. It’s also time that We The People insist that Democrats not approach this from an ideological standpoint but rather from a common sense standpoint. That’s the only way it’ll get done right.

Technorati Tags: Reform, Ideology, Bob Bennett, Henry Waxman, Max Baucus, Health Care, Bill Clinton, William Weld, Tommy Thompson, Welfare, Tim Pawlenty, Innovation, Accessability, Cost, Medicare

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Conservatism, Health Care, Liberals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.