I’m mad. As an American, you should be too. After the release of the 2,000 page HR 3962 House insurance bill and the high-fiving press conference today put on by Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues, one thing has been made crystal clear – the Democrats in Washington are not interested in real health care reform. Let’s walk through the Democratic selling points and why I believe this to be true.

The bill is deficit neutral

The funny thing about a $900 billion bill that House Democrats claim to be deficit neutral is that you need to raise $900 billion elsewhere to pay for it. Democrats plan to do this by cutting health care benefit to seniors and raising taxes. While some in Congress think that taxes increases and money grow on trees, Margaret Thatcher knew better when she said that “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money [to spend].”

Health insurance companies are the villains

President Obama and his friends in Washington would have you believe that insurance companies are evil. They tell us that these companies make huge amounts of profit at the expense of everyday Americans. Unfortunately for the President, the Associated Press released a fact check report recently that showed that the net profit margin of the health insurance industry was only 2.2% last year. This would lead most reasonable people to wonder if the problem might be somewhere else. Another argument is that insurance companies won’t cover Americans with pre-existing conditions. At 2.2% profit margins, this is a tough prospect. I do believe that in conjunction with some other cost savings outlined in this article, there could be enough savings to offset legislation to prevent insurers from denying these Americans.

The public option will provide competition necessary to keep private insurers honest

The selling point for the public option is that it would provide competition for private insurers, thereby lowering health care costs for everyone. This belief is unfortunately short sighted. We know that the health insurance companies had profits of only 2.2% last year. This means that without fixing other problems, the Government-run insurance company could only reduce prices by about 2.2% before it began losing money. One reasonable solution to increasing competition would be to allow interstate competition between private insurance companies, rather than allowing the Government to be the only insurance company allowed to compete across state lines.

This bill will lower the overall cost of health care

This is just simply false. There is no discussion of fixing the underlying problem, which is likely the health care delivery system. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, $200 billion is lost annually from inefficient claims processing, and another $200 billion is lost due to practicing defensive medicine for fear of malpractice. A more intelligent solution to health care reform might be to pass tort reform and institute a national standard for claims processing. Let’s also shift doctors from pay for procedure business model to a salary-based model while we’re at it. If the Government is really feeling ambitious, they might hire an independent third party to go after Medicare fraud and abuse. Let’s also task the Health and Human Services folks to work on national wellness and preventative medicine programs. Another area of significant cost savings lies in allowing the reimportation of pharmaceuticals. Where is the talk of this? Instead the authors of the House bill would rather raise taxes on both everyday Americans and pharmaceutical companies. This solves nothing. Once we have an actual plan to lower health care costs, then we can allow the Government to expand programs to help low income Americans receive health care coverage. In spite of what Democrats on television would have you believe, Republicans are not heartless and in fact want to help their fellow citizens.

The health care reform process with play out on C-SPAN

President Obama made a pledge to Americans that the health care process would be transparent. Unfortunately, HR 3962 was drafted in a back room on Capitol Hill, with visibility provided to only a few Democratic legislators. Even today’s “press conference” to unveil the bill was invite only. Democrats argued that Republicans had no specific objections and were simply being obstructionist, but the truth of that matter is that they had no ability to be specific because there was no bill and they had no visibility into the creation of the bill.

So let’s conclude by comparing HR 3962 to my idea.

HR3962:

• Government-run health care plan
• Limited change to the health care delivery model
• $900 billion bill offset by tax increases and reduced benefits to seniors

My plan:

• Interstate competition for private insurance companies
• Reimporatation of pharmaceuticals
• Tort reform
• National claims processing standard
• Incentives for participation in wellness and preventative medicine programs
• Expanded programs to help low income Americans receive health care
• Shift away from pay for procedure to salaries for doctors
• Minimal cost to taxpayers

Additional thought:
With the Federal Government looking to raise so much money for its own use, there may be a crowding out effect whereby money that would have otherwise been invested in private enterprise will go to the government instead. This has the effect of stifling American business, which is the exact opposite of what we as a country need to accomplish right now.

First, the strengths:

1. The video aims to show us that the Republican Party is diverse.  We’re not just the party of Yosemite Sam as Democrats would like people to think
2. The video makes clear the core Republican values of smaller government, lower taxes, transparency in government, strong defense, equal opportunity
3. The video makes a call to action for relevant 21st century Party leadership to emerge
4. I like the flashbacks to Roosevelt, Lincoln, Reagan, and Goldwater.  Unlike most GOP pieces I’ve seen recently, this was not simply a Reagan-fest but did acknowledge that other brilliant men have made contributions to the Party.

Next, the weaknesses:

1. The guy playing with the shotgun while speaking does not help the gun-toting image
2. Not all Democrats are lemmings.  The video was doing so well until taking a personal shot at Democrats.  I believe a fully positive message would have more impact here.

Take a view for yourself:

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STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for childrens’ health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

———-

I certainly believe in cost control and fiscal responsibility, but I think this is extreme and wrong.  I don’t believe you would find many Americans who believe that reducing births will have an immediate enough impact to pull us out of the current recession.  The original TARP provisioned dollars for wooden arrows and bike repair, and apparently now the lobbiests for birth control have also had their voices heard.

Charlie Cook has written a fabulous article for the National Journal Magazine entitled “Self-Destructive Conservatism: From the look of things, the Republican Party is in danger of cannibalizing itself.” I wrote a similar piece just after the election in which I challenged Republicans to modernize. I believe Charlie is right in believing that the party’s rightward movement has become self-perpetuating. Conservative commentators barely let President Obama finish his twelfth dance of the night to the same song before getting back to Democrat-bashing. The problem here is that finger pointing only works when there is someone to point it at. One day into a Presidency is not quite enough time to warrant the blame game. Instead of spending tonight’s television hours discussing Obama’s flubbed oath and whether or not Caroline Kennedy is withdrawing her bid for Hillary’s seat, why not discuss the merits of Obama’s big government program versus the Republican strategy of tax cuts to stimulate spending? Instead of bashing the coming Guantanamo shutdown, why not discuss alternate proposals so we can bring those responsible for acts against our country to justice while not compromising national security efforts? Republican leadership must remember that my fellow twentysomethings are much smarter and more passionate about the issues than given credit for. Partisan bickering is unattractive at a time when the economy is in crisis and the average person just wants to make sure their future is secure. Let’s participate in constructive debate and discourse and work together to come up with the best solution. People want to hear a message of hope, not negativity. I implore all who read and who are afraid the party principles we stand for are being shuffled by the wayside to remind people what you stand for. Also remind them that the Party is bigger than any one individual, and just because a President or group of elected officials believe in one set of principles, their beliefs do not necessarily represent all Republicans.

The Washington Post has a great article on Mark Felt.

“To reinforce my point, imagine a Basque separatist terrorist organization attacking Madrid. Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous. But no one seems to find it odd that that Pakistani Muslim terrorists who hate India and want it to give up control of Indian Kashmir would send two of its 10 terrorists to kill perhaps the only rabbi in Mumbai.”

We must stand steadfast in supporting Israel and the Jewish people, for if we don’t, it is only a matter of time until the war against the Jews becomes everyone’s problem.

Read Dennis Prager’s article

Random thought:
For my next trick, I will predict that the Raiders will win the Super Bowl this year.  I realize they’re currently 3 - 10, but the tarot card reader really had a strong feeling about this one.

Thoughts:
I believe that we need an American auto industry, and that the companies comprising the industry must be able to compete on an equal playing field. We must focus on maintaining jobs at the car companies as well as suppliers. Shareholders and creditors of these companies should not get bailed out, as they placed their bets and lost. It does appear that a managed bankruptcy appears to be an attractive option, as it sends the message that the government intends to support American workers, and that management should not be rewarded for decades of failed strategy.

Update:
Apparently, the big 3 CEOs don’t think their companies are in quite as bad of shape as they’re leading us to believe.  That’s the only conclustion I can come to after reading about their private jet travel.