There Was "The Republican Alternative" - (American Spectator)

Barry, Harry, Queen Pelosi… and oh yes Steny (heard him yesterday with Greta Van Susteren) keep telling us that the GOP have had no ideas and no plan for healthcare reform; they are just the party of no. Well, if anyone really believes that then they haven’t paid attention and they really are as dumb or brainwashed as the radical progressive Dems and their followers think we/you are.

In reality, the Republicans had more than several options for bills and pulled them together into HR3400 (summary below) and have introduced amendment after amendment to try to bring the Obamacare bill (written by a Soros/ACORN associated felon and friend of the Obama Administration) into a partially workable bill with at least a little reform in it and to stop the complete erosion of healthcare for the American people, since the Dems are H_ll bent on forcing this disastrous plan down our throats, even tough only 26% of uninformed and Kook Aid drinkers support it.

By the way, there are numerous doctors in the House and Senate, most are Republicans, who have been trying to get a meeting (either individually or in a group) with Obama to review, discuss and give some input to this bill since April 2009(8 months). April is the last time the WH has agreed to a meeting or to including the GOP in any debate or meeting either in the White House or on Capitol Hill. Oh and Obama’s grandstand offer of meeting with anyone who’d like to and going through the HC bill … never happened, because the WH would not even respond to the requests of those wanting to meet.

The Republican Alternative
By Peter Ferrara on 11.18.09 @ 6:08AM

Democrats have been telling us all year that the Republicans have no health reform alternative. They are just the party of no! So we must have all been hallucinating when, lo and behold, just before the recent House vote on the Pelosi/Obama government health care takeover bill, there was a vote on…the Republican alternative.

Exactly the opposite of the House Democrat health plan, the Republican alternative would actually reduce the cost of health insurance and care. It would also expand coverage and provide a safety net ensuring that no one would be excluded from essential health coverage or care. It would also expand consumer choice and control over health care.

At the same time, the Republican plan involves no tax increases, no Medicare cuts, no rationing, and no increased deficits now or in the future. Exactly how all this is accomplished is fully explained below.

Lower Costs

The Republican plan allows insurers to sell health insurance across state lines. This would greatly expand competition, enabling the more than 1,000 private insurance companies to each compete nationally. That vastly increased competition would reduce health insurance premiums and costs. It would also greatly expand consumer freedom of choice.

We hear liberal complaints about areas within some states that only have a couple of insurance companies competing. That is entirely due to government regulation. We see ads for car insurance, and every other type of insurance, competing nationally all the time.

There is no reason why we can't enjoy the same for health insurance.
The Republican plan, of course, includes medical liability tort reform modeled after successful reforms in California and Texas. This would sharply reduce costly junk lawsuits and the resulting costly defensive medicine pursued just to protect against frivolous claims. Democrats crassly oppose this because of the enormous contributions they receive from Plaintiffs' attorneys, which has been openly admitted.

The Republican plan would further reduce costs by enhancing Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which are themselves a Republican reform fundamentally changing health care by introducing market incentives to reduce costs. Individuals with HSAs keep most of their money for health care in a savings account, earning tax-free interest, with the rest going to purchase a high-deductible, catastrophic insurance policy. The premium cost for such catastrophic coverage, with deductibles generally ranging from $2,000 to $6,000 a year, is much lower than for standard, low-deductible health insurance, allowing the savings in the account to grow quickly to cover the entire deductible. Patients with HSAs are free to use the money in their accounts for any health care, including preventive care, check-ups, prescriptions, dental care, eye care, and the full range of alternative medicine. Nothing could do more to increase consumer freedom of choice and to put patients in control of their own health care.

Money kept in HSAs can be used for health care in later years, or for anything in retirement. So patients are effectively using their own money for non-catastrophic care. That provides powerful incentives to avoid overly costly or unnecessary care and to look for doctors and hospitals that can provide quality care at lower cost, creating real market competition to reduce costs.

The Republican House alternative would allow consumers to use funds saved in HSAs to pay for the catastrophic insurance covering costs above the deductible. Broadly expanding HSAs across the entire health system, including Medicare and Medicaid, would essentially solve the health cost problem.

CBO confirms that this Republican alternative plan would reduce health insurance costs, exactly the opposite of the Pelosi/Obama plan that CBO confirms would increase health insurance costs. The CBO analysis shows that for millions of families health insurance premiums would be almost $5,000 per year less under this GOP plan than the cheapest health insurance under the Pelosi bill.

Expanded Coverage and a Safety Net

The GOP alternative also includes several provisions to expand health insurance coverage. Most important are the Universal Access Programs that would expand uninsurable risk pools to ensure that all Americans would be able to obtain coverage for any pre-existing condition. The uninsured who become too sick to buy private health insurance covering their condition can turn to their state's risk pool for coverage. They are charged premiums for such coverage based on their ability to pay. Each state then subsidizes its uninsurable risk pool to ensure that it could cover all costs.

Few people become truly uninsurable because of their health condition, so the risk pools are a low cost solution. But trying to force these people into the same market risk pools as everyone else through such policies as guaranteed issue (requiring insurers to accept all applicants for coverage regardless of health condition) and community rating (requiring insurers to charge everyone the same regardless of health condition) just ruins health insurance for the general public, making it too expensive and sharply increasing the uninsured as a result. Providing for the uninsurable separately through their own pool is consequently a much better policy.
The GOP plan would also enable small businesses to pool together to offer health insurance at lower prices, like big corporations and labor unions, which would further increase coverage. The proposal would also allow and encourage coverage for young adults on their parents' insurance through age 25. And though this has already been the law for many years, the Republican plan would also expressly prohibit insurers from canceling health insurance policies as long as payments continue, unless the insured commits fraud or conceals a material fact about a health condition.

The lower costs from the provisions above would also expand health coverage, as lower insurance costs reduce the number of uninsured. Wider availability of low cost HSA insurance would also expand coverage.

Blue Dog Fraud

Again, exactly the opposite of the House Democrat health care scheme, this Republican plan includes no tax increases, no Medicare cuts, and no health care rationing. In sharp contrast, the latest numbers from CBO show the costs of the Pelosi plan already exploding. Once that plan is fully phased in, over the first 10 years (2014-2023) total government spending would increase by over $3 trillion, not the $1 trillion that has been so widely reported. Total Medicare cuts over those 10 years would be over $1 trillion, and total tax increases would run over $1 trillion as well.

Yet, not one of the supposedly fiscal conservative Blue Dog Democrats voted for this Republican plan. Every single Democrat in the House voted against it. The so-called Blue Dog Democrat phenomenon is a scam. These Democrats were elected to the House in conservative districts on the promise that they were, honest to God, real conservatives. But once elected, they play a game with the left-wing House Democrat leadership providing just enough votes to pass Pelosi/Obama socialism every time, with the rest free to vote against it to keep the scam going back home. Whenever the leadership needs their vote, however, they are there.

It is these Blue Dog Democrats that keep the ultraleft House Democrat leadership in power, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco, to Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank from Boston, to Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman from Hollywood, to Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charley Rangel from Harlem, to Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers from Detroit. If this is not the kind of leadership you want for America, then the so-called Blue Dog Democrats all need to be replaced.

The Democrats' Death Panel for Grandma

Whether they vote for any of the Obamacare bills or not, the so-called Blue Dogs in both the House and the Senate are enabling the ultraleft Democrat Congressional leadership in the passage of legislation that imposes government health care rationing on seniors under Medicare, which will deny them essential health care, and begins the implementation of such rationing for everyone else.

Included in these Democrat health bills is a new, unelected, Medicare "Commission" which would implement a new "global budget" for Medicare each year. That global budget would set an arbitrary limit on how much would be spent on health care for seniors every year. The Commission is to enforce that budget by deciding what health care treatments, procedures, surgeries, drugs, etc. would be covered under Medicare and paid for, and which would not. If the Commission decides that the expensive surgery or treatment that Grandma needs to stay alive is just not worth the cost, then the doctors will just come to tell you they are sorry, but there is nothing they can do.

The Wall Street Journal explained the result on Monday by quoting prominent health economist Alain Enthoven, who "has likened a global budget to ‘bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don't see the faces of the people you kill.'" The Journal explained further:
"The hard budget cap means there is only so much money to be divvied up for care, with no account for demographic changes, such as longer life spans, or for the increasing incidence of diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions. Worse, it makes little room for medical innovations. The commission is mandated to go after "sources of excessive cost growth" meaning treatments that are too expensive or whose coverage will boost spending. If researchers find a pricey treatment for Alzheimer's in 2020, that might be banned because it would add new costs and bust the global budget. Or it might decide that "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the pain-killer," as President Obama put it in June."

No true liberal would support allowing the government to play God in this way, deciding who will live and who will die. But today's so-called liberals are so fiercely partisan now that they have become mentally disengaged. They refuse to even consider any conservative or Republican arguments on any issue, from global warming, to tax policy, to economic policy, to the budget. As a result, they have become dangerous people. What they are supporting is an outright assault on the health care of America's seniors. But they don't have a clue.

The House Republican health bill alternative not only includes no such rationing or Medicare cuts. It actually tries to roll back rationing provisions that have already been adopted. The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness is a new bureaucracy created in the so-called stimulus bill. President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors explained the role of "comparative effectiveness" in controlling health costs in a report it issued in June, "The Economic Case for Health Reform." The government bureaucracy in Washington would decide what health care works and what doesn't for everybody. It would then enforce its decisions through the payment system for doctors and hospitals. Those doctors and hospitals that don't follow the received wisdom of the wise and all-knowing federal bureaucrats would be penalized in their payments for your care, if they get paid at all.

The Journal again further explained this policy on Monday, saying:
"The reason that physician discretion -- not Washington's cost minded judgments -- is at the core of medicine is that usually there are no "right" answers. The data from large clinical trials produce generic conclusions that rarely apply to individual patients, who have vastly different biologies, response rates to treatments, and often multiple conditions. A breakthrough drug like Herceptin, which is designed for a certain genetic subset of breast cancer patients, might well be ruled out under such a standardized approach."

You might think that your doctor who knows you and your illness would know what will work for you and what won't far better than faraway government bureaucrats that don't know you at all. But don't tell that to today's Washington Democrats, who know everything about everything, and don't need to hear anything from anybody.
This health care rationing involves a radical decline in America's standard of living. Today, Americans enjoy the best, most advanced, high tech, patient-centered health care in the world, devoted to improving and saving their lives. But after the Democrats get through imposing their throwback socialized medicine philosophy, this will all be gone, and we will suffer with the same third rate health care as in other socialized medicine systems around the world.

This suits President Obama, whose "moral" vision is that America is just another country, and that it is embarrassingly immoral for America to have more prosperity or power than anyone else. That is why all of his policies are leading to this same dead end for America.

Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

If you haven’t figured out, you are being had big time, with this bill. If you have figured it out, you need to signing every petition including for impeachment of the 4 people above and removal of the czar system, joining rallies, sit-ins, tea parties and going to your representatives and Senator’s offices (both local and in DC) and be willing to do whatever it takes to stop this bill from becoming law. Oh and by the way, according to the 10th amendment of our constitution, the government cannot force you to buy healthcare. And demand judicial reviews and the over-turning of any laws and bills that are unconstitutional.

Stand up America, this HC Bill, Cap and Trade (or whatever they call it like the (ClimateGate involved) EPA Greenhouse Gases Declaration) and the non-stop spending to ruin our economy are part of a much bigger plan that has nothing to do with making anything better for the average American, for “YOU”

At the very least: call, fax and email your and the 17 fence sitting senators on this bill and tell them VOTE NO… or you will go, no matter what the amendments they add to this bill to falsify the real goals of the bill and program!! All clear thinking Americans realize that if anything is this secretive and one sided… it has to be bad!!

Update:

(Earlier today they came to a possible compromise… the compromise includes (temporarily doing away with the public option). Instead they will enlarge Medicare, after they already cut a lot of the basic services, to include a lot more people, with a provision that if this does not work… a public option will kick in. And Obama is ready to start transferring all medical records from paper to a central government controlled database which will eventually include all your financial records and give government access to all that info… which they then want to implant on an RFID chip to be implanted under your skin. Provisions for the “overseer and head of the death panel “has already been passed as part of a previous bill in anticipation that this bill would pass and that Americans would rollover!

17 Senators
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) 202-224-4843, Fax: (202) 228-1371
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) 202-224-5623
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) 202-224-2551
Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO) 202-224-5852
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) 202-224-4041, Fax: (202) 224-9750
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) 202-224-5824
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) 202-224-6551, Fax: (202) 228-0012
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) 202-224-2043
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) 202-224-6154
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) 202-224-5274
Sen. John Tester (D-MT) 202-224-2644
Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) 202-224-3004
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) 202-224-2023
Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) 202-224-6324
Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) 202-224-4024

and Republican:

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME),((202)224-5344, Fax: (202) 224-1946

Info for all Senators (from your State) etc.

Stand Up Straight and Listen to Your Mother – Written in Prison by Robert F. Creamer, author of the ObamaCare Bill

Ex-con counts on “Faith Community” to pass health care and Glenn Beck’s take on Creamer

The media furor over the White House state dinner crashers ignores the convicted felon who was invited to attend with the approval of Obama’s inner circle. The ex-convict, Robert B. Creamer, is a friend of White House adviser David Axelrod and the husband of Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. A major Democratic Party political strategist, he is the author of a 628-page book that describes how the Democrats can become the permanent majority party by passing a national health care bill and giving amnesty to illegal immigrants.

With the support of major elements of the “faith community,” the first part of Creamer’s plan is on track.

Creamer’s Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is the book “penned in the pen,” as one observer described it. “I did much of the preliminary work on this book while spending five months on a forced sabbatical at the Federal Prison Camp at Terra Haute Indiana,” Creamer says. Creamer emerged from federal prison in November 2006 after serving five months for financial crimes. His prosecutor was the famous Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who also nailed disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

But this didn’t stop Creamer from being invited to the White House for the first state dinner. Indeed, it makes complete sense in view of the fact that Creamer’s book is full of praise for Obama and even reprints Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address.

The acknowledgements section of Creamer’s book describes how he, like Obama, was influenced by Saul Alinsky (author of Rules for Radicals), described as “the legendary community organizer.” Book endorsements are featured from David Axelrod; Greg Galluzo of the Gamaliel Foundation, which originally sponsored Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago; and Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Creamer notes in his book that Bush aide Karl Rove had predicted in 2004 a “permanent majority” in Congress for the Republican Party. That prediction fell apart just two years later, in 2006, when the Democrats picked up 30 House seats and 6 Senate seats. Nevertheless, Rove subsequently landed a job as a Fox News political analyst.

Creamer’s predictions have turned out to be more accurate. Released in 2007, Creamer’s book said that a successful campaign “to reshape the structure of one-sixth of the American economy,” the health care sector, would depend on getting 60 Democratic votes in the Senate and the election of a “progressive Democrat” in the White House. Today, of course, the Democrats have that significant advantage.

Creamer can take some credit for these developments. His firm, Strategic Consulting Group, still boasts an impressive client list that includes ACORN, SEIU, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and dozens of other “progressive” or Democratic Party state organizations.

Creamer, who went to prison for ripping off non-profit entities, emphasized using “the faith community” to mobilize support for universal health care by highlighting the morality of providing medical care to people in need.

It has not worked out as planned, but it has worked out. As we saw in the House, when the bill was in trouble, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to a demand from Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was in Rome, to hold a vote on an anti-abortion amendment introduced by Rep. Bart Stupak, a Catholic pro-life Democrat. At the same time, Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), told House Republican Leader John Boehner, a faithful Catholic, not to undermine the amendment. Boehner complied. As a result, the amendment passed, 240-194, with 64 Democrats and 176 Republicans in favor. This provided conservative Democrats enough cover to ignore the other objectionable aspects and vote for the final bill.

Washington Times religion reporter Julia Duin confirmed all of this, but noted in a story filed from the recent USCCB meeting in Baltimore that “Cardinal McCarrick walked away when I approached him about his call from the Vatican…”

Pelosi and many “progressives” acquiesced in the anti-abortion ploy, realizing that the provision could eventually be nullified through subsequent legislation.

Nevertheless, the Bishops are pursuing the same strategy in the Senate. Their chosen vehicle for anti-abortion language in this version of the bill appears to be Democratic Senator Robert Casey, a so-called “conservative” and “pro-life” Catholic Democrat from Pennsylvania. Casey says, however, that if his effort to water down the pro-abortion tone of the legislation fails, he may still vote for the bill.

It looks probable, therefore, that the Senate health care bill will pass. Then, the two versions will be combined in a congressional conference and the compromise will come before Congress for a final vote.

If passed, as Creamer understands, this will hook millions of Americans on another federal program, and they will depend on―and vote for―Democrats to grant them more benefits.

It is important to note that the Bishops, who have a reputation among some commentators as being politically “conservative,” have not been objecting to the “public option” in the Senate plan. Indeed, they have long favored a government guaranteed “right” to health care and federal funding to make that a reality.

The latest USCCB statement on the health care legislation urges Senators to “improve the Senate health care bill in the key areas of affordability, immigration, federal funding and coverage of abortion and conscience rights.” Translated into common-sense language, this means coverage for illegal aliens and more federal funding, in addition to the pro-life language that will enable some “conservative” Democrats and possibly some Republicans to vote for it.

Creamer himself spoke in his book of a “public plan,” which is supposed to guarantee that “right” to health care and which eventually became the “public option” in the actual legislation. In a speech captured on YouTube, Creamer’s wife, Rep. Schakowsky, candidly said that a public option is a Trojan Horse for a complete federal takeover.

Next is the immigration battle. Creamer explains that this “will have an enormous impact on the battle for power between the progressive and conservative forces in American society.” He explains that “If the Democrats continue to stand firmly for immigrant rights, the issue will define immigrants’ voting loyalties for a generation. If we are successful, a gigantic block of progressive votes will enter the electorate over the next 15 years―a block that could be decisive in the battle for the future.”

As we can already see, however, there is an overlap into the health care debate. And again, the “faith community” is playing a major role. In fact, the Catholic Bishops are not only vigorously lobbying for giving illegal immigrants access to a national health care plan but favor amnesty for them. In his recent testimony before the Senate, Cardinal McCarrick called it “legalization for the undocumented.”

It looks bleak for Republicans if the Bishops have their way and continue to play Creamer’s tune. GOP agreement with the Bishops on a pro-life provision in the bill should not distract attention from how this part of the “faith community” has become a major component of the “progressive” base that elects Democrats and keeps them in power. The facts show that most Catholics voted for Obama, and half or more of the Bishops, according to Catholic TV host Raymond Arroyo, voted for him, too. The USCCB staff is known to be overwhelmingly left-wing.

This is why some conservative Catholics think that the Catholic hierarchy is pursuing a strategy on health care that pays lip service to the pro-life cause but plays directly into Obama’s (and Creamer’s) hands.

Glenn Beck discussed Creamer, his book and repercussions of the “Bigger Plan” on his show (video below)

November 29, 2009 by Cliff Kincaid – Small Govt Times.com