Dean is Right: Kill the Bill!

Dean is Right: Kill the Bill!
Star Parker
Monday, December 21, 2009

When, earlier this year, the new Obama administration set health care reform into motion, word was that they carefully studied the tactical failures of Hillarycare, with resolution to avoid the same mistakes.

Ironically, but not surprisingly, they have repeated them all.

That's not to say that the door has shut on Obamacare. Something still may pass. But the victory will be pyrrhic. The bills stink. Polling uniformly shows the public, for good reason, doesn't want them. And Democrats will pay a political price if they force their irresponsible concoction on the nation.

What was supposedly the clever insight of the Obama team was to let Congress take ownership of health care reform. Rather than piecing it together behind closed doors in the White House, as did Hillary Clinton, let the folks who will have to pass it put their necks on the line.

But the elementary point overlooked was that it doesn't matter behind whose closed doors politicians hijack one-sixth of the American economy. I'm not going to do any better designing a space shuttle whether I do it in my kitchen or in my den. It's not my job and I don't know how to do it.

Yet, with a special brand of hubris, seasoned with a perverse sense of what making history means, a handful of Democrat power brokers have spent a good part of this year designing how hundreds of millions of Americans will, one by one, spend a few trillion dollars annually on health care. And they've done this with practically no genuine public debate and discussion.

So how could the product not be garbage?

Even as I write, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tries to put together 60 votes for passage of his bill, most senators have no idea what's in it.

Times are so strange that I find myself actually agreeing with former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, who has urged that the Senate bill be killed. Dean writes in the Washington Post " ... as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America."

He correctly identifies one key reason why the legislation is a dismal failure. It does nothing to increase competition in insurance markets.

But, like his liberal friends, Dean's strange idea of competition is creating a government plan to compete with private insurance companies. This makes as much sense as taxpayers creating a new government car company to make GM more efficient.

More competition among health insurers is critical. It's competition that drives down prices and creates new efficiencies.

But the way to do this is by deregulating this highly regulated market. Break down state regulatory fiefdoms that prohibit residents from buying from out-of-state companies.

And get government out of the business of defining what insurance is. It only causes insurance to reflect what insurance lobbyists want rather than consumers.

The health care reform bills we have now do exactly the opposite. All existing regulations are left in place, and vast, sweeping new ones are layered on top of them.

Now, in a wave of particular brilliance, our legislators have created a mandate to force every consumer to buy the government-defined products from these barely competitive insurance companies. The inevitable result will be to hurt consumers even more and subsidize the insurance companies.

The stock market tells the story. Since the health care reform process began with the White House summit on March 5, the overall stock market has risen an impressive 54 percent. However, stocks of major health insurers have soared more: CIGNA, up 157 percent. UnitedHealth Group, up 88 percent. Wellpoint, up 84 percent. Aetna, up 65 percent.

It's time to stop this charade and begin a new, open process aimed to reforming health care that will actually serve American consumers.
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Pro-Lifers Examine Reid's "Compromises"
Monday, December 21, 2009
Posted by: Meredith Jessup at 1:06 PM

Americans United for Life has completed a legal analysis of Reid's managers amendment to the Senate health care bill and is warning about some key pro-life concerns:

From a preliminary analysis of Majority Leader Reid’s manager’s amendment, it is clear that it is unacceptable and would be a radical departure from existing law and policy.

First, the amendment provides inadequate conscience protection, because it does not prohibit any government entity or program (federal, state, or local) from discriminating against health care providers that do not want to participate in abortions.

Second, the amendment fails to address our concerns that under the Mikulski amendment (already accepted in the underlying bill), the Health Resources and services Administration (HRSA) has the power to require private insurance plans to include abortion coverage under the guise of “preventive care.”

Third, the amendment allows insurance plans that cover abortions to receive government subsidies, which is a radical departure from existing law (which is not allowed under the Hyde Amendment and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program).

Fourth, while the amendment allows states to “opt-out” of allowing private plans that include abortion coverage to participate in their exchanges, this “opt-out” provision makes abortion coverage normative. In other words, states will have to act to prevent subsidies from going to plans that cover abortions in their state, turning on its head the traditional federal approach to abortion.

Fifth, the amendment fails to ensure federal funds will not go to assisted suicide.