Health Care Question For Puff Daschle, Ted Kennedy
Tom Daschle is expected to be confirmed as Obama’s HHS Secretary, where he’s expected to carry the ball on Obama’s health care plan. Columnist David Broder has weighed in on the issue:
When Barack Obama’s transition team let out word that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle would be his choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services and quarterback his work on health reform, it signaled that Obama is serious about his campaign promise to make that issue a first-term priority.
Daschle would not leave a lucrative job at a law firm in order to twiddle his thumbs. Only with a clear understanding that the new president will put his own political capital at risk in this cause would the South Dakotan sign up for the job.
Daschle can be of great help to Obama in achieving the goal. He has made his own in-depth study of health care issues and brings a genuine passion to the subject. And he knows the Senate, where past efforts have foundered.
But there are positive signs within the Senate as well. Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Finance Committee, one of the two main centers of Senate action, moved first by releasing a detailed outline of his preferred piece of legislation. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the chairman of the other committee of jurisdiction, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, quickly asserted his right to be at the center of action. He organized three task forces within his committee and reached out to Baucus to suggest that their staffs start exchanging ideas as well.
Anything coming out of that Bermuda Triangle of Bureaucratic Excess is doomed for failure. Legislation might pass on this but it won’t be reform. I’ll accept that it’ll be Reform In Name Only (RINO) but it won’t be true reform.
It’ll be a failure because they’ll impose gazillions of mandates on insurers, hospitals and health care providers. In short, they’ll try using a Washington-Knows-Best, Top-Down dictatorial model.
My question for Sen. Kennedy, Sen. Baucus and Mr. Daschle is simple: Why not allow the health care purchaser meet with their primary care physician to put together a customized wellness plan, which the health care purchaser would take to insurance companies for bids on the best prices?
When the issue is abortion, Democrats quickly point out that these decisions should be left to the patient and her doctor. Does that opinion only apply to abortion? Why shouldn’t it apply to health care? Certainly a person’s primary care physician knows what a person’s health care needs are. Certainly a person would have to sign off on the plan as being worthwhile.
The Senate isn’t interested in that model because it exposes the true agenda behind the health care reform debate. That agenda is getting more control of our lives. It isn’t about making the best health care system in world better. It’s about C-O-N-T-R-O-L, which is what motivates Democrats.
Instead of signing onto a top-down model, Republicans should push for fewer mandates, both at the federal and state levels, with more choices for consumers and more competition for insurers and health care providers. I’m betting that combination of principles would appeal to lots of voters because people prefer choices over restrictions and overregulation.
Technorati Tags: Reforms, Health Care, Mandates, Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, RINO, Competition, Insurers, Consumers, Physicians, Wellness Programs, Liberty
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Bureaucracy and healthcare, the best system in the world, by far, turned over to Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy. Awesome.
Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given
for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY during the Carter Administration? Anybody? Anything? No?
Didn’t think so.
Bottom line . . we’ve spent several hundred billion
dollars in support of an agency the reason for which not one
person who reads this can remember.
Ready? It was very simple, and at the time everybody
thought it very appropriate.
The Department of Energy was instituted 8-04-1977 TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL. HEY, PRETTY EFFICIENT, HUH?
AND NOW IT’S 2008, 31 YEARS LATER, AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS NECESSARY DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR, THEY HAVE 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES, AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000
CONTRACT EMPLOYEES AND LOOK AT THE JOB THEY HAVE DONE!
THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY ‘WHAT WAS I THINKING?’
Ah yes, good ole bureaucracy. And now we are going to turn the Banking system over to them? God Help us.
(don’t forget, they want the healthcare system too)
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:48 pm
And your 401k’s folded into Social Security.
But SEW your forgetting one thing. THIS TIME, is different, because this time the right people are in charge.
All those other dog and pony shows, the War on Poverty (at last count over 40 billion and still quagmired), the war on illiteracy, midnight basketball, etc, were not products of the “Office of the President Elect”.