While insisting the focus is on jobs and the economy, President Obama continues today to prop up Democrats’ failed health care, health care, health care agenda until it sucks every last molecule of oxygen out of the room. For the government takeover of health care to succeed, the President just needs the country to concentrate really, really hard for six more hours today so he can explain it one more time. Ahem.
Congressional leaders head to the White House today for a “bi-partisan” meeting with the President to discuss Democrats’ latest proposal to take control over one-sixth of this nation’s economy through the nationalization of health care. When Democrats say “bi-partisan” they mean figuring out how to force Republicans to agree with them.
Republicans have been literally shut out of every health care planning and negotiation session in this Congress. All of them. Free-market health care “reform” is not welcome and will not be entertained. This is not about health care. It’s about control.
The media stage is all set for the President to make his last-ditch effort to turn the tide, save the day and bring socialized medicine over the finish line. He’s the one he’s been waiting for in this whole health care miasma. Nobody does it better. (Please pardon my lack of enthusiasm for the “summit.”)
Don’t for a moment fall for the notion that Republicans haven’t already presented bills, proposals or even ideas. The conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) has released an updated list of 70 separate health care bills its members have introduced during the 111th Congress. Beginning with Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Ca.) “The Health Care Incentive Act” introduced January 6, 2009 up to and through January 26th of this year’s introduction of H.R. 4505 Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) to enable State homes to furnish nursing home care to parents any of whose children died while serving in the Armed Forces, this document gives a summary of an impressive body of legislation offered by Republicans. This is not an exhaustive list but merely 70 of the health care bills introduced in the House by RSC members alone. The status of practically all of these bills reads: Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat majority have not considered this bill in committee or on the House floor.
In the Democrat’s world, if you ignore an idea it doesn’t exist.
 |
Rep. Tom Price, M.D. (R-Ga.) is the chairman of the RSC and is an orthopedic surgeon. The RSC offered its own free market solution entitled the “Empowering Patients First Act” (H.R. 1086) in June of 2009 which focuses on four main principles: universal coverage affordability, individual insurance policy ownership, improvements in health care delivery structure and reining in cost.
Through tax credits and tax refunds, the bill makes the purchase of health care financially feasible for all Americans. Expansion of risk pools offers coverage of pre-existing conditions. It protects employer-sponsored insurance so if you like your current health insurance plan, you really can keep it and, even better, take it with you wherever you go because you own it.
The very first health care bill offered in this Congress was a bi-partisan, bi-cameral bill introduced in May of 2009, sponsored by Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-Okla.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and Representatives Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). The bill offers universal access to quality, affordable healthcare without raising taxes, without increasing spending, and without a government takeover of America’s healthcare system.
“The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009” uses choice and real competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs. Initially focusing on prevention, the bill singles out the five chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes) that cause two-thirds of American deaths and make up 75% of total health care expenditures. The bill incentivizes treatment for these largely preventable diseases and uses innovative measures such as targeting the use of food stamps to healthy food choices.
You can find summaries and the full text of “The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009” bill on Rep. Ryan’s website.
When Democrats say Republicans haven’t offered any ideas, now you know better. This effort by the Obama administration is not about a health care crisis in America. The government takeover of healthcare is about control - statist control over who will and who will not have access to healthcare which means the government decides who lives and who dies in this country.
HUMAN EVENTS will provide reporting and analysis tomorrow of the dog-and-pony show televised LIVE, gavel-to-gavel on the C-SPAN website http://cspan.org/ , C-SPAN3, CSPAN Radio and various and sundry other news and web outlets. C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 will rebroadcast.
Cartoon created by Brett Noel
