GOP Needs to Make Case at Health Care Summit

President Obama has so lowered expectations for the Republican Party that if they come to the health care summit he has called at the White House with concrete and well articulated proposals, it will blow the country away. Repeatedly, the president has fashioned the GOP as the party of "no," goading them by saying, "If you have any ideas, bring them on."

Republicans need to be on their toes and aggressive in the meeting, and not let it devolve into a question and answer session with the president hogging the mike. He asked for a meeting, not a lecture or a media conference, and Republicans need to demand equal time to present their ideas.

Start with tort reform. The Republicans need to explain how much of the unnecessary medical costs are being driven by useless tort litigation. In Mississippi, where they acted to preclude much of it, malpractice premiums have declined by 50 percent.

The GOP needs to explain to the nation that when the president says he is going to cut costs by eliminating tests that aren't necessary, he is catching doctors in a vice. On the one side, they have the government prohibiting or discouraging them from tests, and on the other, the trial lawyer bar waiting to pounce on them for failing to administer the proper tests if their care has a bad outcome.

The Republicans need to make the cost-cutting part of the health care summit about tort reform, constantly raising the subject as the counter to the president's proposed $500 billion cut in Medicare.

Then Republicans need to discuss other cost-saving measures, such as allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines and other measures to encourage competition.

Republicans should also zero in on the need for more doctors if we are to expand the number of patients covered. They must articulate the conclusion so much of the nation has come to (but official Washington has never embraced) that you cannot have more patients without more doctors unless you want to impose rationing. They should make the case that you need to phase in coverage for those who are not now covered so that you can increase the supply of doctors and nurses at the same time. Supply must keep pace with demand so that artificial scarcity does not leave the nation short of doctors.

The Republicans need to point out that in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney inflicted a version of Obamacare on the state, the waiting time to see a doctor in Boston is now 63 days. They need to stress that any rationing will be felt primarily by the elderly and will lead to premature deaths.

Finally, Republicans need to explain their own proposals for reforming health care -- including Medical Savings Accounts and expansions of current tax breaks to encourage people and small businesses to purchase insurance.

Then, Republicans need to keep up a steady drumfire of criticism of the president's proposals. They need to:

-- Criticize the individual mandate as unconstitutional and paint a vivid picture of how much it will cost young families.

-- Demand that young people be permitted to purchase catastrophic coverage to satisfy any mandate rather than full coverage they don't need.

-- Spell out, in detail, how the tax on medical devices will raise the cost of pacemakers, automated wheelchairs, arterial stints, prosthetic limbs and all manner of necessary medical equipment.

-- Attack the proposal to make a taxpayer spend 10 percent of his income, as opposed to 7.5 percent at present, on medical expenses in order to deduct them. Expose this tax as a tax on the sick.

-- Criticize the idea that people could be imprisoned for failing to have health insurance or to pay the fine the legislation imposes. There is a big difference between tax evasion and failing to have health insurance.

With proper preparation, the Republicans can turn this health care summit into a nationally televised town meeting such as frustrated Democratic congressmen last August.

Obama is simply trying to manipulate public opinion against the GOP. He has no intention of using free market economy ideas in making health care work, like opening state lines so that people can chose which plans to buy.

Its all about statism, and getting at the wealth of sick Americans, and using the IRS to enforce sich a regime of enslavement. The GOP needs to reveal this to America.

>The average American voter is the reason Obama’s poll numbers are dropping and we have a GOP Senator from Mass.<

No I respectfully disagree. What we are seeing is the conservative who generally doesn’t like to make waves finally being fed up with the nonsense in America.

The young voters are extremely ignorant and buy the Obama lies hook line and sinker because they live off his sound bytes. They haven’t seen politicians at work before wooing an audience and they believed him.

Thanks for posting this, Kaslin; and for pinging me, Ex-Tex!

The Republican leadership has to adopt both a short-term and long-term strategy for controlling the message in a pro-active way.

They have to make it clear that

they are not at Obama's beck-and-call, and do not intend to sit there like chumps while Obama postures and poses for the media; and
they have their own ideas for Health Care Health, which would be perfectly sensible and workable without being stuck like bacon bits onto the huge, lard-bloated Choresterol-o-palooza known as the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Greaseburger.
In other words, we are not interested in providing add-ins to any cardiac-arrest Obamanation of a bill.

My list to my congresscritter looks something like this (as separate bill ideas):

Portability: Allow citizens to take their health plan with tem when they move or change jobs
Tort Reform: End frivolous and jackpot lawsuits against doctors, by requiring losers in suits to pay all legal costs, and cap lawsuit awards (e.g. a modest $250,000 cap on pain and suffering claims.)
End Interstate Restrictions: Allow citizens to buy health insurance across state lines, creating vastly more genuine competition between insurance companies by giving more choices to citizens.
Tax Deductions: Make all health insurance and medical costs tax-deductible to individuals.
Health Savings Accounts: Expand HSA/IRAs.
End discrimination by insurers against people who sign up and then later get sick: Make it illegal for insurance companies to drop you if you become ill, injured, or disabled.

Just these reforms alone would quickly cut the cost of health care in America 30-40%. And once people get jobs --- real jobs in the private sector, resulting from the revival of American business and industry, not craptitious government make-work projects --- millions more will be in a position to make their own health-care choices.

Which is a characteristic of free citizens.

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