LET´S LOOK AT WHY THE REPUBLICAN´S "NON-REFORM HEALTH CARE PLAN" FAILED?

The Republican´s Health Care Plan actually was written by the insurance company lobbyists.

…If the DC insurance lobbyists had asked for one of these, the GOP would have put it in the plan.

Alan Grayson, the Democratic Representative from Florida was recently quoted as saying the following during a radio interview:

"The Republican´s Health Care plan was written by the insurance industry.

The insurance companies wanted tort reform, the GOP put it in their plan.

The insurance industry also wanted to ignore pre-existing conditions, so the Republicans left it out.

The insurance lobbyists wanted to cover fewer Americans than are covered today, and at a higher cost, and that´s how they wrote the plan.

The health care industry didn´t want their private Medicare Advantage subsidies reduced, so the Republicans left out the cuts."

Then Representative Grayson added;

"If the insurance industry had wanted a pony, the Republicans would have added that to the plan as well."

Everything that the representative from Florida said is exactly true in what was included or left out of the latest, so-called health care reform package as offered by the Republican Party.

Here´s a thumb-nail summary of their plan:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued an analysis of the alternative health care bill from the House Republicans.

The GOP plan would have saved the federal budget deficit $68 billion over 10 years and on average reduce insurance premiums compared to what they would be under current law. This all sounds pretty good, but its success would still have depended on trusting the private insurance companies, which to date has been a total disaster. The Democrat´s bill will save $150 Billion over those same 10 years.

The Republican bill would have only lowered average health insurance premiums by 5% to 8% for individuals, 7 to 10% for small groups, and zero to 3% for large groups. By having an "Insurance Exchange" with multiple private companies to choose from and a non-profit "Public Option", the premiums will be substantially lower with the Democratic plan.

The CBO estimates that the GOP plan would have only reduced the number of the uninsured by 3 million of the estimated 47 million currently uninsured Americans. The Democrat's plan will cover 96% of all Americans.

GOP´s Tort / Malpractice Reform Proposal: All claims against any doctor would have needed to be filed within three years, and it capped damages at $250,000. Their plan says that no matter how bad the malpractice claim was, $250,000 is the cap on the liability. This definitely didn´t sound like an appropriate dollar amount if someone died or was maimed for life through a real malpractice claim…? There is no tort reform such as this in the Democrat´s plan.

The Republican plan would have done nothing regarding "pre-existing conditions" or for stopping health insurance companies from cherry-picking the healthiest of individuals for coverage at the expense of others. This failure would have left millions of Americans ineligible for coverage and would have continued the crisis facing families across the country. (Remember, the majority of America´s mortgage foreclosures and personal bankruptcies are due to catastrophic illness and the families´ lack of insurance.)

The GOP plan would have allowed Americans to purchase insurance across state lines, but it provided nothing for driving down insurance premium costs such as it would have done with a "Public Option". All the ability to purchase across state lines would have done would be to allow the big insurance companies the opportunity to drive out any smaller insurance companies.

Plenty of new mandates were imposed by the bill, including barring annual or lifetime spending limits, as does the Democrat´s plan as well. It would have also allowed young adults to stay on their parents insurance until age 25. The Democratic plan is until age 27.

The bill did not have an insurance exchange for individual Americans to choose from a list of health care providers. It also didn´t do one thing to move Americans beyond the current employer-based health care system. Workers would still have been locked into whatever insurance policies their employers chose for them, and they still could not take their insurance with them when they moved from job to job or got laid-off. (In other words, the current, highly expensive COBRA insurance would still have been a laid-off employee´s only choice.) The Democratic plan deals positively with each of these concerns.

The GOP proposal wasn't real reform. It was more of a document that the Republicans had to put out just so they could say that they had some sort of health care bill.

The one page Republican summary of the bill also had a chart titled, "Scorecard: Speaker Pelosi's Government Takeover vs. GOP Common-Sense Solution". The GOP then boasted that while Speaker Pelosi's bill did cut Medicare by $500 Billion, the Republican alternative had zero dollars in Medicare cuts. (However, they neglected to add that the $500 Million cuts in the Democrat´s plan were NOT being made to regular Medicare coverage. They are only to reduce the over-payments of 14% of tax-payer dollars, approved by the previous Republican Congress to the private insurance companies for their ´private´ Medicare Advantage type policies.)

And of all the above GOP proposals, how would they have been implemented? The Republicans did not have one single plan for the execution of their proposals. The Democratic plan is many pages long, but it is very complete and highly detailed in definition and implementation.

The Republicans continue to say that the Democrat´s plan was an impossible plan and that it "just wouldn´t work". If that´s true, then how have Germany, France and Canada been able to cover 100% of their citizens at approximately half the cost of America´s current cost per person. The latest surveys of these countries´ citizens shows that overall they love their health care coverage and think America´s current system is totally stupid. And with America´s higher costs, America still has almost 50 million uninsured Americans?

And please note, in these other countries´ the health care is not "Socialized Medicine", it´s "Socialized Insurance". Their hospitals and doctors are private like those in the US. They are not under the ownership or control of their governments.

The reality is that in 1906, the Republican President Teddy Roosevelt first brought up the idea of universal health care for all Americans. Since then, the Republican Party has been very successful, in combination with and the financial support of health care, insurance and drug companies, in keeping all Americans from having comprehensive health care coverage. That is no longer acceptable for the wealthiest nation in the world. The passing of the House bill is just the first step forward.

Change is slow, but it is finally occurring.

Copyright: G.Ater 2009

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