by Priscilla Jones
Texas has no shortage of prominent GOP leaders – both here in The Republic and in the swamp in Washington. Some (like Sen. Ted Cruz) are practically household names and have a large national presence. Others are similarly influential and effective, but prefer to do the real heavy lifting behind the scenes, when possible. This is the way many Texans think of Congressman Randy Weber.
The drive to repeal and replace Obamacare will continue to vex conservative reformers like Weber. While the first pass of the Republican-sponsored American Health Care Act didn’t cross the finish line, there is no time to relax and celebrate the halt of a far-from-perfect legislative effort. We need our strongest conservatives to stand strong. The healthcare reform issue is far from being considered a win for conservatives. In this regard, Rep. Weber can help lead the way.
He has already offered some of the most thoughtful and articulate baseline summaries of Obamacare here:
“ObamaCare is bad law, passed through a flawed process, and it will have a lasting negative impact on our nation. We must repeal it immediately and replace it with sensible, patient-centered health-care reforms.” – Rep. Weber
He specifically pointed out what the Obamacare disaster has meant:
“Since the President’s health care law has been implemented, we have seen numerous security glitches with healthcare.gov. Small businesses are being stifled and forced to cut jobs. Worse still, families are losing their coverage and seeing premiums skyrocket. Last Congress, House Republicans put forth legislation that would help alleviate many of the hardships Obamacare mandated on our job creators and families, but this effort was blocked by Harry Reid and the President. The President’s resistance to working with Congress is not about the best policies for the American people, but about politics and pride. The President should work with Congress to repeal Obamacare and pass legislation like the American Health Care Reform Act, which would foster affordable health care coverage options for all Americans without having the government takeover 1/6th of the economy.”
The GOP majority in the House of Representatives was certainly right to move forward with an aggressive policy solution to the Obamacare mess… but was the American Health Care Act good enough?
Rep. Weber was clearly concerned. His dispatch from the Hill stated, “In House Freedom Caucus intense debate, making the AHCA as strong as possible, NOT another government program. Needs more vetting.”
He also chided GOP leaders for indicating the health care overhaul is dead for now.
“When we had a Democratic president in the White House, the House of Representatives passed 60 bills to repeal Obamacare,” Weber said. “Why in the world wouldn’t they try it more than once with a Republican president?”
It is well past time for the GOP majority in the House to keep faith with its voters and its principles. As limited government constitutionalists, we need to bolster members like Randy Weber to continue the fight. If he or we settle for anything less than an effective and workable repeal of Obamacare, it will be a legislative and political defeat that will both cripple the Republican Party and devastate the reform movement.
I read that there were 12 mandates to Obamacare and Ryan’s plan addressed two of them. Mr. Weber tell the rest of repubs we don’t want to replace Obamacare. We want to get rid of it and go to market based solutions that we had been moving towards before Obama came along. There are plenty of regs outside of a discarded Obamacare plan that could be addressed to do so.
HSA, cross state markets, catastrophic policies, actually paying for services out of pocket without a third party intrusion, etc.
It seems to me that no one in the GOP has sufficiently explained to the stakeholders (taxpayers and recipients) what they intended to do in a single voice. It is a fine thing to be opposed to Obamacare in principle and goals to provide a replacement, but for the life of me I still do not understand what they intended to do and I consider myself to be reasonably informed.
What nobody – Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, Liberals, etc. – seems to be focusing on is how to bring down the high cost of health services. The cost of medical care and drugs is much higher in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.
I know that in Canada and Europe where they have socialized medicine, taxes to pay for it are sky high. But counting those high taxes and out of pocket costs if any, the Canadians and Europeans still pay less for their medical care than Americans do.
I also know that the health care Americans receive, at least for those who can afford it, is the best in the world.
But how do you bring down those high costs? Don’t give me the crap that the competitive market place will bring costs down. I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck.
Howard,
I agree with you that the low hanging fruit has yet to be picked. Health Insurance, whether provided by the government or by private enterprise needs to have a larger pool of folks paying premiums than are drawing from the system.
We need healthier people to better play the odds. This can be done by folks making healthier choices at an earlier age, but the downside to this approach is the resistance to a big brother or nanny state supervision.
Incentives should be make to encourage better lifestyle choices. Folks who have been verified as making better choices would pay lower premiums and those who fully embrace the alternative can pay more for living a not so smart lifestyle.
Consider the following measures and choices.
1. Smoking
2. Obesity and High Cholesterol Diet
3. Recreational and Prescription Drug Abuse
4, Vaccinations
5. Poor Health Preventative Maintenance
6. Lack of Pre-Natal Health Care
I am sure that there are more but I am basing my thoughts on the CDC’s Causes of Mortality Data. Go after the root causes of those items and medical costs would be significantly reduced. Many corporate health insurance policies already offer “Wellness” incentives on employee contributions to health insurance.
80{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of problems are caused by only 20{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of possible causes.
Just my thoughts.
I did not vote for Trump. But the ACA and its mandates was wrong (basically because it puts a very large economic burden on lower middle class people and small companies). If they can’t or won’t fix it, repeal it. The same people that would die or not have insurance are the same people that would have died or not had insurance before the passage of the ACA.
Mr Neither,
My suggestion for lowering the costs by changing folk’s health choices is a long term savings. If you are looking for a quick fix; this is not it.
Long term it is a way to go and you will find large companies are already doing this. My brother works for one of the major oil companies and they get a reduction in premium if they can prove they are taking part in a physical fitness program. He wears one of those “Fitbit” watches and shares the data with the insurance company. The program is not mandatory, but if he wants the discount….
You can expect this type or program to be adopted with all of the commercial health insurance providers as they want to drive costs down as well.
The payout for such a change is in 20 – 30 years, but it puts some responsibility back on the individual, which I thought was a Republican mantra of sorts.
As far as uninsured go…..there is no such thing in a practical sense. There are those that pay their hospital & medical bills from their pockets, there are folks that rely primarily on insurance, and there are those who pay nothing and stiff the hospital for the bill.
Hospitals are businesses and as such must make a profit or cease to exist. The bills for the those who elect to not pay their way are carried by you and I,in higher prices charged by the hospitals. Getting the uninsured to pay something is a step in the right direction..
“Getting the uninsured to pay something is a step in the right direction”, is an interesting statement. There are many people that don’t get sick, that never go to hospitals because of sickness, but somehow they should help pay for other’s insurance including probably yours?
$300 Billion a year is how much is subsidized every year for people who have insurance but don’t pay taxes on that part of their income. To equal the playing field those persons that don’t have insurance should have about $12,000 a year as a deduction including the regular deductions before they start paying a penalty.
The best hospitals are non-profits, and don’t have shareholders looking for dividends, or managers looking for giant stock option grants. Same thing with insurance, it works best when the profit motive is removed, since there is no reason to deny care to benefit shareholders or management. The managers of large non-profit health care businesses make good money, but none of them are receiving the $100 million stock grants we see for profit organization leaders receive.
Health insurance, like any other insurance, works best when there is a large pool of subscribers, which means that the healthy need to participate, otherwise, there’s not enough money to pay for the care provided to the folks who get sick. It doesn’t help that the costs tend to go up as people get older, especially after retirement when incomes are reduced.
Conceptually, there’s no reason a single payer system won’t work. Medicare has the lowest administration costs of any plan, and delivers care pretty efficiently. Employer based plans, where an insurance company provides administration while the employer provides all the funding are also pretty efficient, since the employers are looking for the best service at the best price, and don’t generally tolerate inefficiencies. However, we need to get past employer provided basic health care, a benefit rooted in wage and price controls from WWII, and come up with a better way to fund those benefits. If we had a single payer plan that was funded by a 5{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} payroll tax for both employer and employee, costs for most folks would be lower, and more folks would be covered, and more would be contributing, I know that sort of plan would reduce my costs – my share plus my employer’s share run about $1400-$1700 per month for really good benefits. That sort of funding model would also provide a means to fund clinics in areas that are not currently well served, which would keep the poor out of the ER’s, reducing costs, and improving service. Additional benefits include no loss of care if your job disappears(lay off, employer bankruptcy, etc), the ability to move to a new job without losing continuity of care, etc.