The Wrong Battlefield, The Wrong Criteria
Tuesday, after finishing this post, I did a quick scan of FB. After scanning that quickly, I noticed former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman was online so I asked him his opinion on the health care debate, specifically the GOP’s arguments in the House.
I prefaced that by saying the House GOP had talked too much about deficit neutrality and that they hadn’t focused enough on whether the bill would make health insurance premiums less expensive. Here’s Sen. Coleman’s reply:
Norm: we sound like detached accountants. And debt is a new phenomena-when the word trillion got into the lexicon, things changed. We need to let folks know that it’s going to cost them more, it’s going to raise their taxes, and it’s going to crush their kids future…and for what???? to solve part of a problem?
Norm couldn’t be more right in his analysis. I’m not suggesting, nor was Norm, that the cost didn’t matter. He’s right in saying that people ar worried now that annual deficits are measured in trillions of dollars. That’s got families frightened about every expense.
Here’s the context that we should view the rising cost of health insurance premiums:
Our taxes will increase under the Democrats’ plans. Health insurance premiums will continue rising under the Democrats’ plans. We’ll be spending trillions of dollars over the next 20 years. The new debt that’s being created by the Obama budget is crushing the next generation’s future.
Now Democrats want to spend trillions of dollars to partially fix the problem? I don’t think so.
Deficit neutrality is important but only if it’s coupled with good policies that lower health care and health insurance costs. Who cares if a bill is deficit neutral if it punishes people for being responsible:
The minute Pelosicare is signed into law, HSAs aren’t a nannystate-approved health insurance policy.
Let’s suppose that you have an HSA and a policy that covers catatstrophic events like a broken leg, stroke or heart attacks. The minute Pelosicare takes effect, the Obama administration will send you a notice that your insurance isn’t in compliance with Pelosicare and that they’re fining you for not complying with Pelosicare’s mandates.
You’ve done the right thing. You’re providing health insurance for your family with your money. You’ve worked hard. You’ve done the right thing. And you’re getting fined for that.
Shouldn’t We The People impress on the legislators, the ones who theoretically work for us, that WE DEMAND that this get corrected ASAP? Shouldn’t We The People DEMAND that lawsuit abuse reform be included in any reform legislation? Shouldn’t We The People DEMAND that anything that’s done will lower insurance premiums?
After all, that’s what President Obama campaigned on:
Barack Obama ran for president on a promise of saving the typical family $2,500 a year in lower health care premiums.
But that was then. No one in the White House is making such a pledge now.
This is proof that the Democrats’ legislation is another bait-and-switch gambit. Yes, another. The stimulus bill was touted as a bill to jumpstart the economy. Nine months later, we know that it was a bill to jumpstart the Democrats’ political allies. This legislation was touted as bringing down health care costs, which were “crippling private industry.”
This legislation does nothing to slow down health care costs to small businesses or families. I noted above that HR 3962 punishes people for doing the right thing. how is that helping families? How is piling on $729,000,000,000 of new taxes helping small businesses?
The federal government shouldn’t tell us that a health insurance policy that’s legal today isn’t legal once health insurance ‘reform’ is enacted. It’s time that We The People told our employees that they’d better start listening to us or we’ll fire them in less than a year.
Obama was the one who raised expectations of lower premiums. From one city to the next, and during the presidential debates, Obama made the pledge almost as often as he vowed to remove troops from Iraq: “We estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year.”
He has barely uttered it since taking office. The last recorded mention by Obama was in May, when he announced that six health industry groups agreed to lower the growth rate in health care spending by $2 trillion over 10 years, resulting in a savings of $2,500 per family “in the coming years.”
Whether President Obama raised expectations is irrelevant. We The People can’t afford to keep paying ever-increasing health insurance premiums. Thus far, only the House GOP alternative lowers insurance premiums. That isn’t just my opinion. It’s the verdict that CBO has rendered:
CBO anticipates that the combination of provisions in the amendment would reduce average private health insurance premiums per enrollee in the United States, relative to what they would be under current law-by 7 percent to 10 percent in the small group market, by 5 percent to 8 percent for individually purchased insurance, and by zero to 3 percent in the large group market. Those are averages, however, and they are subject to a great deal of uncertainty; some individuals and families in each market would see different results.
Here’s another provision in the bill that should get closer scrutiny:
A State Innovations grant program to provide federal payments to states that achieve specified reductions in the number of uninsured individuals or in the premiums for small group or individually purchased policies.
When welfare reform was passed in 1996, the states were the testing ground for what eventually became part of the national welfare reform. It only makes sense that we look to the states to be the experimentation stations for health care reform.
Until the Democrats’ legislation does something to increase competition and lower health insurance premiums, their legislation should be a non-starter. Lowering OUR COSTS is the only criteria that’s important.
Technorati Tags: Mandates, Fines, Pelosicare, Tax Increases, Speaker Pelosi, Democrats, Insurance Premiums, HSAs, Reforms, Norm Coleman, We The People, Accountability, Republicans, Election 2010
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
November 15th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Far as I can see, Gary, Coleman wasn’t spot on with his comment because the proposed donkey bills WON’T even solve “part of the problem.”
What they will do is mask massive portions of the problems troubling the health care system we now have, while creating a whole new set of massive problems, and that’s where the Republicans are losing in the entire debate.
Show the existing real problems, and show the ones about to be created, and show how none of the existing problems will be solved by the jackass plans.
The problem isn’t that somewhere between 20 and 45 million Americans don’t have insurance, it’s that, because of runaway costs (prodded mostly by government interference) many can’t afford what’s available. It’s the government interference in a myriad of ways that has driven costs through the roof, and it’s the same government interference that must be reined in, not expanded.
The only reason to pass the donkey legislation is so the government can take greater control of individual lives. Period.