Repeal_Obamacare

Congress has pushed through an awful government-run healthcare plan that over seventy percent of Americans polled oppose. It pushes this nation further in its slide towards socialism and that runs against the constitutional limitations placed on the role of the federal government. I am calling for a repeal of this legislation also known as Obamacare. Those who have either supported this legislation or who do not work to repeal it will hear from the voters in the upcoming November 2010 congressional elections. Democrats: You've been put on notice, and you should not underestimate our power at the polls. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) released a statement saying that he will introduce legislation to repeal the health care reform bill that passed. Here's the full text: "This bill is unconstitutional and it cannot be fixed. It must be repealed," said Senator DeMint. "The battle for health care freedom is not over and I will introduce legislation this week to repeal this health takeover. "Unless this trillion-dollar assault on our freedoms is repealed, it will force Americans to purchase Washington-approved health plans or face stiff penalties. It will fund abortions, raise taxes and insurance premiums, while reducing health care choices and quality." "This arrogant power grab proves that the President and his party care more about government control than the will of the American people. Americans told Washington to keep its hands off their health care in opinion polls, at public protests, and at the ballot box, but their pleas were ignored.” "If the President and Democrats were serious about true health care reform, there were many free-market solutions we could have easily passed. Americans support commonsense reforms such as purchasing coverage across state lines, stopping frivolous medical lawsuits, and giving the same tax breaks to Americans who don't get their insurance at work. Unfortunately, Democrats refused to listen." Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson made use of an ingenious social insurance system - promoting the idea that we all pay in today to take out tomorrow. It was consistent with American individualism. It was simple. It was intuitive. It was bipartisan. Obama's new system has none of those virtues. This feature is what makes repealing or substantially modifying Social Security and/or Medicare so difficult. They are entitlements that are broadly given to the middle class, who also pays for them. To the extent these programs are redistributive, that redistribution is largely hidden. Everyone, from the poorest member of society to Bill Gates, has some stake in Social Security and Medicare. By the time a member of the middle class retires at age 65, he will have likely paid tens of thousands of dollars into the Social Security system. He expects to get that money back. The same goes for Medicare, which is funded by a smaller tax than Social Security (though unlike Social Security, that tax is not subject to an annual income cap), and is similarly available to all elderly Americans. In other words, cutting Social Security or Medicare requires taking something away from the middle class that they've already paid for. That's obviously hard to do. While this bill was intended to be a broad middle class entitlement in the mold of Social Security and Medicare, it is fundamentally different. It is funded by a variety of mechanisms that target specific stakeholders. It is paid for primarily by Medicare beneficiaries and the wealthy, neither of whom are likely to receive the benefits. While beneficiaries will have a stake in the program, it will not be as substantial as their stake in their Medicare or Social Security benefits, which they have already essentially "bought" by the time they approach retirement. Moreover, this bill will have a smaller number of beneficiaries, especially at first. Democrats like to brag that in the weeks after the bill has passed, the ban on pre-existing conditions will be lifted for children, adults with pre-existing conditions will be allowed to participate in high-risk insurance pools, and adults will be able to maintain their children on their insurance until those children turn twenty-six. These are popular features of the bill, but I'm not certain how broad their appeal is. Most people do not have pre-existing conditions that they know of, nor do they have children with pre-existing conditions. I've not seen statistics on the number of parents who would like to keep their children on their insurance policies, but I imagine the number is relatively small compared to the vast number of people who are eligible for Medicare or Social Security. Indeed, the central difficulty that the bill will run up against is the same one it has run up against all along: most people already have health insurance, and most people are basically happy with their insurance. While a number of Americans will enjoy receiving subsidies for purchasing health care on the exchanges (in 2014), many of the 30 million Americans who will be covered by this bill are Americans who could buy health insurance today, but choose not to. For a comparatively small number of obvious beneficiaries, the bill creates a number of real losers as well: People who participate in Medicare Advantage, healthy people who would rather not purchase insurance, and people whose employers stop providing health insurance as a result of the bill, to name a few examples. Liberals keep complaining that Republicans don't have a plan for reforming health care in America. I have a plan. It's a one-page bill creating a free market in health insurance. Nearly every problem with health care in this country--apart from trial lawyers and out-of-date magazines in doctors' waiting rooms would be solved by my plan. In the first sentence, Congress will amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act to allow interstate competition in health insurance. We can't have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which they manifestly do not, they'd make insurers compete. The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company's home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today. That's the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations, and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to herself this week. President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn't afford the $6,700 premiums, and now she's got cancer. Much as I admire Obama's use of terminally ill human beings as political props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded insurance had she not been required by Ohio's state insurance mandates to purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited OB/GYN visits, among other things. It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics. You know things like cancer. The third sentence of my bill would prohibit the federal government from regulating insurance companies, except for normal laws and regulations that apply to all companies. Freed from onerous state and federal mandates turning insurance companies into public utilities, insurers would be allowed to offer a whole smorgasbord of insurance plans, finally giving consumers a choice. Instead of Harry Reid deciding whether your insurance plan covers Viagra, this decision would be made by you, the consumer. Instead of insurance companies jumping to the tune of politicians bought by health-care lobbyists, they would jump to tune of hundreds of millions of Americans buying health insurance on the free market. Hypochondriacs could still buy the aromatherapy plan and normal people would be able to buy plans that only cover things such as major illness, accidents and disease. (Again, things like Natoma Canfield's cancer.) This would, in effect, transform medical insurance into ... a form of insurance! My bill will not only solve nearly every problem allegedly addressed by Obamacare, but mine entails zero cost to the taxpayer. Indeed, a free market in health insurance would produce major tax savings as layers of government bureaucrats, unnecessary to medical service in America, get fired. For example, in a free market, the government wouldn't need to prohibit insurance companies from excluding "pre-existing conditions." Of course, an insurance company has to be able to refuse NEW customers with "pre-existing conditions." Otherwise, everyone would just wait to get sick to buy insurance. It's the same reason you can't buy fire insurance on a house that's already on fire. That isn't an "insurance company"; it's what's known as a "Christian charity." What Democrats are insinuating when they denounce exclusions of “pre-existing conditions” is an insurance company using the "pre-existing condition" ruse to deny coverage to a current policy holder--someone who's been paying into the plan, year after year. Any insurance company operating in the free market that pulled that trick wouldn't stay in business long. Right now, insurance companies are protected by government regulations from having to honor their contracts. Violating contracts isn't so easy when competitors are lurking, ready to steal your customers. In addition to saving taxpayer money and providing better health insurance, my plan also saves trees by being 2,199 pages shorter than the Democrats' plan. Works Cited: 1. Rayfield, Jillian. “DeMint: Healthcare Bill Is “Unconstitutional” And “Must Be Repealed”” TPM 21 Mar. 2010. < http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/demint-health-care-bill-must-be-repealed.php> 2. Rudnick, Paul. “Hi From Heidi” New Yorker Vol. 86 Issue 15 May 2010 3. Dallek, Robert. “Medicare’s Complicated Birth” American Heritage Vol. 60 Issue 2 Summer 2010 4. Weller, Charles D. “The McCarran-Ferguson Act’s Antitrust Exemption for Insurance: Language, History, and Policy” Duke Law Journal 1978 5. Williamson Kevin D. “The Other National Debt” National Review Vol. 62 Issue 11 Jun. 2010 6. Nix, Kathryn. “Top 10 Reasons Obamacare Is a Disaster” Human Events. Vol. 66 Issue 14 Apr. 2010