Exhibit A: Republicans are Nuts

I get a lot of email and backchannel comments when I post my pro-healthcare reform things and so I thought I’d try to share a plan that is sponsored by Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), “The Healthy Americans Act”:

The Basic Principles of the Healthy Americans Act

CHOICE — Gives Americans choice in what type of coverage best suits their individual and family’s needs and a choice in where they receive health care services.

PORTABILITY — Because the individual will now own their health policy, insurance becomes portable from job to job and individuals will no longer feel tied to their job because of health benefits.

TAX REFORM — Breaks the link between employment and insurance, giving employees instead of employers the tax benefit, which will strengthen incentives to shop for lower cost plans, as well as improve health care quality.

HEALTHY BEHAVIOR — Promotes personal responsibility and preventative medicine by creating incentives for individuals to engage in healthy behavior.

MARKET FORCES — Provides for patient-driven health care through market forces by allowing more transparency and competition, thereby forcing insurance companies to compete on price, benefits, and quality.

You can read more by clicking here.

Not bad. Why aren’t Republicans jumping all over this plan? Because they are nuts. This proposed bill contains the exact talking points that conservatives use when they whine about when they oppose the mostly Democratic bills.

Not a single person who has disagreed with me about healthcare reform in the U.S. has shared this plan. Virtually ever single person who has disagreed with me has listed things they’d like to see from healthcare reform and this plan has it.

Karl Rove likes Senator Bob Bennett, for crying out loud! He wouldn’t be our little lovey dovey Rovey if he didn’t try to throw out some diversionary crap as well:

Rove also defended the federal spending under the Bush administration, saying that, overall, nondefense discretionary spending grew more slowly than inflation during the last years of the Bush administration.

During the Bush years, overall discretionary spending grew at a rate in excess of 30 percent, according to figures from the White House budget office.

So yeah, here’s a bipartisan health plan that isn’t being talked about because the Republican party is insane. Don’t blame me, I’M OPEN TO TALK ABOUT THIS PLAN.

  • http://www.flickr.com/gourdgal susaw

    husband and I were talking this morning about the public choice option being discussed. My husband is a retired federal employee and as such we are eligible for federal benefits. We have had federal medical benefits for over 40 years through the federal government. We both signed up for Medicare at age 65 but supplement with our federal medical benefit. We have GEHA standard option (GEHA​.com) which I believe costs us $155.78/month. This on top of the Medicare which I think is about $200. But even at that it is still cheaper than most Americans who can pay for insurance, do pay.

    Why don’t the Democrats promote this over the public option. Open it up the the uninsured and the small businessman? Wouldn’t that help many people. There are many more options available under the Federal option, some not so cheap, but I still think cheaper than private insurance. And, wouldn’t increasing the number of people covered under the Feds decrease the cost for everyone?

  • nobody

    “Why aren’t Republicans jumping all over this plan?”

    I expect because it has zero chance of passage, for one thing. And maybe because stopping the much worse and much more likely proposals has priority.

    Chastising Republicans for doing nothing would make more sense if the Administration and the Congressional majorities had made sincere efforts to propose bills the GOP could vote for. When the side with the parliamentary advantage plays hardball, you can’t expect the other side to play softball.

  • http://homegrownandthebug.wordpress.com Homegrown

    “…because it has zero chance of passage, for one thing.”

    And why is that, pray tell? If it has most of the things Republicans are bitching about the other bills not having then, uh…what’s the problem?

    And I just want to point this out. The Administration and the majorities HAVE made sincere efforts to put out bills that Republicans COULD vote for. Republicans just won’t do it. What I hear as the mainstay of their argument is that 1. the government shouldn’t run a program this big and 2. it’ll cost a fortune.

    Let’s very quickly debunk:
    1. Dude, the government runs a program this big and I hate to keep beating a dead elephant here but there’s this thing called Medicare. People fucking love it, pardon my language. Could it be more efficient? For sure. But just because the program isn’t entirely efficient, does that cancel out all the good about it that benefits so many Americans?
    2. Again, here I go with the DUDE! It will. But is the cost of a program that the government will do their very best to offset really give us a good reason to royally screw the working poor?

    I hate to hear that tired argument, that this is only supported by people who won’t pay the taxes to cover the cost and are just looking for a hand out. Work, they say, and we’ll take care of you. But, for me anyway, the travesty of this thing not being wholeheartedly embraced by EVERY member of the House and the Senate is that it will benefit those of us that have good jobs and still can’t make ends meet, let alone insure ourselves. Do I want insurance? Oh my god, YES! I’m a single mother, I NEED it. I work for a charity, I make almost $2 more than the minimum wage, and I still cannot afford coverage. I’d happily fork over another 20% of my paycheck for some damn insurance if that were an option. Shit, I’d even give 30% for the peace of mind.
    My mother works for my state services. She insures herself, my father, and my younger brother. It costs her pert near $500 monthly to do so. But here’s the kicker, they don’t go to the doctor because the co-pays are so high they can’t afford it anyway.

    It’s just ridiculous. I’d love a Republican that handed out a bill he’s written at a town hall that insures all Americans instead of nasty speech concerning why the bills already out there were crafted by Hitler from the grave.

    PS — Jon, have you read the ‘View From Your Sickbed’ columns on Andrew Sullivan’s blog? They are heartbreaking eye-openers…

    • nobody

      You seriously think it’s persuasive to inform me of Medicare’s existence?

      Or perhaps you think that you don’t need to be persuasive, because “health care is a right”?

      Much deleted for the avoidance of disharmony.

      • http://blurbomat.com blurb

        Health care should be regarded as a right. We are the best resources for each other. Having a healthy citizenry means happy people. Happy people are more productive. I wonder what will happen to the crime rate if everybody were to get health insurance. Also, I wonder what would happen if we uncoupled insurance from employers, which was the point I was hoping to discuss with this post. Alas.

        • nobody

          Well, then maybe you should have spent less time arguing that GOP neglect of this proposal proves their insanity. Because that’s what I took to be your point.

          But. If we decouple insurance from employment, so that consumers spend more of their own money on their care, we will over time see a migration to increases in quality and reductions in cost. It won’t happen quickly, but once started it will become a powerful and wide-reaching trend that will reshape the system in ways that are literally unimaginable. That would reduce the public cost of subsidizing those who truly can’t provide for themselves. It might also open new solutions for people with pre-existing conditions.

          We’d have to _reduce_ regulation of insurers, as consumers would start looking for a wider variety of insurance products. And we might have to look at the market power of providers like hospitals.

          P.S. On the argument you advance, health care isn’t a right if it doesn’t make the population more productive, or less criminal. But rights are rooted in our nature, and discernible without knowledge of economics or criminal anthropology. Universal health care might be a worthwhile “utility”, but it is not, and cannot be, a “right”.

          • Cortner

            I don’t mind saying that healthcare is a right, in the same sense that we have a right to food and shelter. If you say that it is the right of government to forcibly take all the money used for food and shelter from us and divide it amongst us so that we are all fed and housed the same, I would take issue. The Constitution does not provide for a right to healthcare. The rights given by this document are only rights to action such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, right to pursue happiness, etc. The Constitution does not give you the rights to goods and services provided by private individuals such as doctors, nurses, tailors, cooks. It gaurantees rights insofar as they do not interfere with the rights of others. If I were a dentist and you had a cavity, you have no right to demand my services without my being able to seek compensation. You are free to barter with me or by some other means pay me, or I can of my own free will choose to render those services at no cost. That doesn’t mean the government can’t make providing health coverage it’s business. It has in the case of Medicare. Why the health care reformers propose a new government option rather than expanding Medicare that is already in place, I don’t know. It may be that they know it would speed the program to insolvency.

            There are a lot of plans and proposals out there on both sides of the aisle. I don’t think it’s fair to generalize that all GOP members are against healthcare reform in general. I think Tom Coburn in particular brings a lot to the table in the discussion. His baby is “The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009.” I followed Massachusetts’ attempt at healthcare reform with great interest only to find that the costs of the plan have increased dramatically yearly and private insurance costs are increasing more than the national average and the plan is already being labelled by many as unsustainable. I do not want to see the same thing happen on a national level. We cannot afford to pay more for something we’re already paying a ridiculous amount for. I don’t think the Dems are being completely honest in what their selling either. I do believe the underlying reason for the public option is so that single payer will become necessary. Leftist democratic supporters have not hidden that they want single payer, and Obama in the past has said he is an advocate for single payer. I’m not sure how you can characterize all GOP as “nuts” without doing some serious examination of the Democrats as well. As for myself, I don’t really trust any of them. They are politicians afterall and they’re main motivation is re-election. They all pander to one group or another to ensure that happens. I’m just saying keep an open mind. I think whatever reform we do initially needs to be cost neutral. I’m not an economist but the national debt concerns me, both parties are guilty in this regard. I wonder what happens if other nations, particularly China or Japan, decide they no longer want to buy our treasury bonds or can. Maybe I’m too sensitive about it or maybe it’s not really a problem. If somebody knows something that will relieve my concern, I’d be happy to hear it.

          • http://blurbomat.com blurb

            Let’s go this way:

            We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

            The U.S. spends a lot of money on the “common defence” and not so much on “domestic tranquility” and “general Welfare”. I would argue the Constitution provides explicit need for universal health care, including government supported options that we all share the cost in.

            Conservatives love to spend money on defense, but it stops there.

            • Cortner

              We know your belief that liberals=good and conservatives=bad. I would submit that both like to spend money they don’t have. Considering Democrats control both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, they can hardly blame Republicans if they fail to pass health care reform that they can stomach.

              To quote myself: “That doesn’t mean the government can’t make providing health coverage it’s business.” My only argument was that the “rights” provided by the Constitution are rights to action that do not impede on the rights of others and not rights to goods and services provided by private individuals. Physicians that take Medicare are reimbursed for their services and they are allowed to limit the number of Medicare patients they see. Even if single payer were enacted, I believe providers would still have the option of opting out of the plan and providing a fee for service for individuals who still wish to privately pay for services.

            • nobody

              You can argue that way if you like, but you’d have to explain why very few have read the Preamble. Your reading implies a much broader set of “rights”, such as State provision of food, clothing, housing, education, and probably transportation — because why stop at health care? And it’s very clear that this is not what our Founders intended. They may no effort to provide such guarantees, and would surely have been far more explicit in their provision had they intended them. They created no means to finance such distributions, and were clearly believers in the protection of property rights. Jefferson even wrote of his concern of what would happen when the majority realized it could vote itself distributions of wealthier citizens’ property. Property was understood to have a political purpose, in that it provided a source of power that counterpoised the awesome powers of the State. Wealth enabled individuality, and provided one source of dissenting opinion.

              A much more common reading of the Constitution envisions a government among self-sufficient individuals, with the ability and responsibility to look out for themselves. Indeed one chief purpose of the Constitution was to restrain the power of government to interfere in its citizens’ lives, as the Founding generation was chiefly concerned by the problem of tyranny. Adams was explicit that the Revolution sought a _political_ equality that would prevent an aristocracy that installed privilege in a set of persons simply by their identity, but that it never envisioned a _material_ equality, or pretended that there was some actual equality in the physical and mental abilities of citizens. Lincoln, our political genius of human equality and dignity and the most precise and foresighted stator of political principle that I know of, never suggested, in all his long campaign for freedom and dignity, that these required a material equality.

              So there is no basis by which you can expect anyone to share your reading of broad social responsibilities from the Constitution, and in fact considerable reason to understand the outright rejection of that reading. Enforcing such a reading would be a novelty in American politics, and would certainly not tend toward the development of a large political consensus.

  • http://palliedavis.blogspot.com psavoie

    I just wanted to say “thank you” for posting so much about the need for healthcare reform! The problem with so much of what is going on is that people are un– or misinformed.

    If only people would read more and quit watching all the crap tv pundits are putting out there…

    • downsouth

      I agree, thank you! Obviously I live “down south” where Obama is considered the anti-Christ so it’s nice to at least be able to READ a reasonable point of view.

      I personally love when people say, “I think we should just drop this whole Healthcare Reform thingy. I’m happy with my healthcare.” Yeah — that’s because YOU HAVE IT!!!

  • http://fredlet.com fredlet

    This format kind of reminds me of the Australian mortgage plan. You took out a loan and it traveled with you to whatever house you bought. None of this pay-off, new loans stuff.

  • HDC

    Portability? Cost transparency? Medicare reform too? And keep what you have if you are happy with it? My god! Can it be? Sanity and logic. I could just about kiss good old Bob and Ron there.

    Why aren’t’ these guys on the bipartisan panel? Oh, right. Washington is a trainwreck. That’s right. Sigh.

    Thanks for sharing this one Jon. Better than a cup of coffee this morning.

  • Le Fiffre

    The Bennett-Wyden plan helps me feel good about having voted for both Bennett (gasp!) and President Obama. Is the plan DOA? We’ll see. The President could well love it, but he’s trapped — remember that he launched the HC discussion with a pledge not to tax health benefits, and that’s part and parcel of Bennett-Wyden (see http://​www​.slideshare​.net/​d​a​n​r​o​a​m​/​h​e​a​l​t​h​c​a​r​e​-​n​a​p​k​i​ns-all). The President can’t endorse it without political coverage, such as in the event other plans crash and burn. So both parties may be keeping the Bennett-Wyden plan in their back pocket. (Look! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a bi-partisan solution!)

    President Obama’s health care initiative is so politically audacious that the GOP will inflict all the damage it can to the President’s party in the course of passing something.

    Filtering through our HC discussion what many seem to be asking is What is the proper role of our Federal Government?–a question as old as our republic, and worth asking by every generation. But when town hall hooligans shout that HC reform is “un-American,” or “socialist,” my head spins. Exactly what is “American” to these people?

    It was awfully golly-gee-whiz American to bust the railroad trusts to curb the excesses of capitalism. (Are our HC giants are any less far-reaching or arrogant than railroad and oil barons of the last century?) What about Social Security? (Pretty socialist, if you think about it.) What about our fabled interstate highway system? (Invented by the Fuhrer, imitated by Ike, shared by all but controlled by the Feds. Does having it make us fascist, or just able to borrow a good idea?) What about Medicare and VHA? (All part of government-run health care that serves one in four Americans and, as Jon pointed out, delivers better care than the private sector. Are they “un-‘merkin” too?) Ooh, what about the NFL? (All teams share broadcast revenue equally, cap player salaries, and draft backwards to help keep teams equal. Pretty damned socialist.)

    My point: There are many flavors of socialism, and some are already part and parcel of America the Beautiful bucause many, many people want it that way. Every day card-carrying Republicans zero-out Grandma’s assets so Uncle Sam will pay for her nursing home care — they dig socialist bennies.

    I say it’s the American way to pull together to solve challenges that are larger than the individual and beyond the reach of our local and state governments, be it war or disease. In addition, the measure of America or any society is how well we care for the least among us. That’s why I no longer believe that health care should be a solely profit-driven business. Advancing universal health care fits very nicely with our history of advancing social justice. It also happens to be essential to preserving the global competitiveness of our free market economy.

    Our national discourse has brought me to this conclusion, and the red-faced town meeting hooligans have helped: Limited socialism is The American Way. So call me a socialist democrat and I’ll be proud of it. (Just don’t try to take away my guns.)

  • erieli

    I am a 27-year old, educated, open-minded female. I regularly read both your blog and your wife’s blog. I voted for Barack Obama. I am also a registered Republican. Politically, I fall in the middle of the road; I am socially liberal but slightly more conservative fiscally.

    Here’s the thing – Because I am a Republican does not mean that I am nuts. Nor does it mean that my family members – all Republicans – are nuts. And although this is your blog and you, of course, are allowed to write whatever you wish – you should know that you are alienating your readers who might be registered Republicans who aren’t close-minded, bible-beating, NRA members.

    Some of us are open-minded idealists who are as frustrated with what is going on in Washington as Democrats are. I just so happen to have some beliefs, separate from the healthcare issue, that make me identify slightly more with Republican ideals than Democratic ones.

    You need to remember that the Republican politicians in power are, as you know, the worst kind of Republican. They give the rest of us a bad name, hence why we are labeled “nuts” by intelligent, liberal bloggers and pundits like yourself. We’re not all nuts, and some of us are just as frustrated as you. Please remember that.