Last month in the National Review, Mark Hemingway debunked the notion peddled in the MSM, by liberal pundits and on left-wing blogs that the GOP, deprived of political power in our nation’s capital, is also bereft of new ideas. He held that
The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, who’s not known for being a partisan bomb thrower, appeared to be vying for the David Broder Award for Lazy Conventional Wisdom when he recently wrote, “My Republican friends keep asking me when I’ll take the GOP seriously again and why I’ve stopped writing about ticky-tak political gamesmanship and GOP consultant tricks. When they’re a serious party with serious ideas, then we can talk.”
Perhaps that notion stemmed from the 2008 campaign when Republican presidential nominee John McCain failed to adequately promote his own policy proposals, particularly his sensible proposal for health care reform.
So, let’s hope that when congressional Republicans put forward similarly sensible proposals, they do a better job than did our party’s presidential candidate in promoting them. Today, GOProud is helping them do just that. Yesterday, Republicans Senators Richard Burr (NC) and Tom Coburn, M.D. (OK) Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) introduced the Patients Choice Act, a comprehensive health care reform bill, in the Senate and House respectively.
Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud, was quick to praise the proposal, pointing out “This free-market based healthcare reform bill would expand access to domestic partner benefits and empower individuals – including gay and lesbian Americans – to take control over their own healthcare.” (Emphasis added.) I doubt, however, that other gay groups will hail how the free-market aspects of the Republican reform bill benefit gay people. They seem to discount the private sector’s record in responding to our concerns. Private companies have been quicker to offer domestic partnership benefits to same-sex partners than have government entities.
Simply put, private-sector approaches give us more choices:
The bicameral Patients Choice Act would make quality, affordable healthcare available to all Americans without creating government run healthcare. “Our friends on the left advocate for a larger role for the federal government in our healthcare system; the truth is that expanding the federal government’s involvement in healthcare will expand discrimination against gays and lesbians,” continued LaSalvia. “Federal laws currently prohibit the extension of domestic partner healthcare benefits and refuse to recognize same-sex relationships.”
We all recognize the need for comprehensive reform, but Democratic plans, which rely heavily on increased federal involvement, will only serve to exacerbate health care problems. Democrats need to learn from the experience of government-run health care around the world where increased state involvement has led to lower quality, fewer services and longer waits.
Kudos to GOProud for pointing out the merits of the GOP’s market-based approach. Let’s hope other gay groups don’t let their fealty to the Democratic Party and statist ideas prevent them from realizing how this approach, by offering more choices, is particularly beneficial to gay and lesbian Americans.
A gay group that praises the free market! Nice to see!
What are you talking about?! The Patients Choice Act ends the tax credit provided to businesses for health care coverage, instead providing a direct $5,710 tax cut to families and $2,290 to individuals. But end the tax credit to businesses and businesses will stop providing coverage, forcing everyone to purchase their own individual health insurance.
As the document says:
But what that really means is, the Patients Choice Act shifts the burden of purchasing healthcare from employers to individuals. So if you like your own employer based health insurance, the Patients Choice Act is not for you. It’ll end it.
It’s a more radical proposal than anything Obama is proposing. The Patients Choice Act would end our current employer based health insurance system.
Leave it to the GOP to take a bad problem and make it worse.
In short, The Patients Choice Act is a big giveaway to business because it absolves them from having to shoulder the burden of providing health insurance coverage to their employees. And it’ll save business money because the cost of purchasing health care per individual is greater than the cost of the current tax credit to businesses or the tax credit that would be provided to families and individuals under the Patients Choice Act. It shifts the burden from employers to individuals.
I support single-payer, government-backed universal health care. I think our health care system should be as strong and efficient as our military. I think, as did most of our Founding Fathers, that the government’s role is to provide those things which people need for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Paine backed a similar idea of universal health care.
I have been fighting my insurance company for almost a year to have them pay for a doctor-ordered stress test–over $3000. I am about to go into my fourth appeal. I am sure that any gay person looking at health issues would see that insurance companies do not want to pay for medical needs.
Anyone who supports pure capitalism–how did you get to work today? On government-built roads? Did you not die because of government-inspected meat? Were you protected by a government-led military? If so, then you are not a pure capitalist. If you rely on the government for these necessary services, then adding health care is simply another logical step.
Capitalism, BTW, is not conservatism.
Patients Choice isnt the problem, affordable coverage is. Nothing in this press release explains how this will reduce costs. Shifting the burden from employer to employee to buy coverage does not reduce cost for the employee, it increases it.
And the truly ironic part of the PR was a Republican suggesting this is good for GLBT people because the Federal Gov’t prohibits domestic partner benefits. Maybe a federal law recognizing same sex relationships is in order? Repeal of DOMA anyone?
Will there be a similar press release by these senators and congressmen signing on to a bill that would allow such a recognition at a Federal level?
A link to Tom Paine on this subject:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/tpaine3.html
I hope I am not the only one who notices the diametric opposition of those two statements. Contradictions cannot be achieved in reality.
Emphasis added. Wrong again, Ash! Sorry, but that is not what the Founding Fathers thought at all. Even if your claim about Paine (alone among them) were true.
Hmm, I wonder how it will affect the colective bargining strength by employer owned insurance? OTOH, at least it’s open and honest in shifting ‘the burden’ of healthcare costs to the employee, as opposed to teh Obama approach of taxing it as additional income.
It would also benefit non-traditional families, as for most DP coverage, the premium paid by the employeer for the partner is already considered income and taxable.
Ash, who’s your carrier? What’s the reason for the denial? if you want me to go over it w/you just send an email to my nickname @hotmail.com.
I got to work on a pothole infested road, until I pulled into the nice, soon to be repaved private owned parking lot.
Governemnt care will be as effective as Amtrak, the Postal Service and the DMV.
By that logic, everything should be “provided” by the government. Ash, there’s a country where they do that: North Korea. Give it a shot 😉
Nope. Capitalism is a moral, political and economic system that one advocates, if one chooses to. Just because the system is not in effect – and you’re right about that bit, at least: that we actually do NOT live under capitalism in this country – does not invalidate the system or the fact that (in capitalism’s case) we would all be vastly better off in myriad ways if the system were ever to be implemented.
#6 – Thanks for the link. It would suggest that you’ve significantly misrepresented Paine, in your claim that his social insurance scheme (which, again, the other and more important Founders did not believe in) is “similar” to your idea of “universal health care” and “the government’s role is to provide”.
‘Nuff time spent on this.
In short, The Patients Choice Act is a big giveaway to business because it absolves them from having to shoulder the burden of providing health insurance coverage to their employees.
And, of course, the leftist argument for nationalizing healthcare is because US businesses aren’t competitive (lie) with those located in countries with socialized medicine. Now, when you remove that burden from business WITHOUT centralizing the money and power in the hands of the government, leftists flip-flop and start screaming.
The reason the Obama Party wants to nationalize healthcare in this country is the same reason they fight tooth and nail to avoid any breaking of Social Security’s monopoly; they want to be able to take the trillions of dollars in real cash from peoples’ paychecks and spend it NOW in exchange for IOUs, to possibly be paid at a future date, in an amount of their choosing, subject to change at their whim.
OK, here’s Thomas Jefferson–see especially the section “Helping Those In Need” (if your keyboard can produce that phrase):
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1310.htm
That would be a good thing, personal responsibility. It would free people from being stuck in a deadend job. It would allow more people to go out on their own and be entrepreneurial.
If you are a liberal, all those things are and anathema. Of course they would rather you rely on government than your employer. Since they have so many ways to control the employers, of course they are against giving people and actual choice.
btw, last year when Walmart and some of the large drug store chains tried to open basic healthcare services in their stores, it was the government that went screaming and yelling about how this is unsafe for the consumer – they hate competition.
I, along with the Pope, who I think is generally held to be a conservative, believe in a “seamless garment of life”–protection from conception to natural death. Among the things that includes is a pro-life stance, being against torture, being against the death penalty, being against euthanasia, supporting public education, and considering health care a human right. I’ve always assumed that pro-life was conservative, but as I list these things, I wonder. In order to ensure the Founding Fathers’ goal of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, it seems to me that all these issues need to be supported–health care for all being a primary goal. Since insurance is for-profit, it can never provide universal health care. Just like we trust the government for the military, public education, food quality, and transportation infrastructure, we need to trust the government on healthcare. Again, this has nothing to do with undermining the free market system or capitalism. It is like paying rent to your country the way you’d pay rent for an office so you could conduct your business in safety.
I read the complaint that the GOP recommendation will replace business-sponsored health care with individual choice plans.
So, as a businessman, I ask, what is wrong with that? Why must businesses provide health care benefits if individuals can receive approximately equal tax benefits and choose for themselves the level of coverage that is right for them?
The selection of health care benefits impose a significant cost to businesses, in terms of premium costs, additional human resources costs, and potential liability costs.
Many small businesses cannot afford offering health care benefits, so employees in those cases find themselves without health care. In addition, many self-employed or part time employees who are without health care can benefit from free choice.
Let tax-free health care insurance be available to all americans, regardless of their employment status, and free businesses to run their businesses without the unnecessary drain on their resources.
In response to Ashpenaz:
“It is like paying rent to your country the way you’d pay rent for an office so you could conduct your business in safety.”
We don’t pay rent to our country! To think so would imply the country/government holds legal title to this nation. It is we, individually and corporately, who own and hold title to our country.It is our social contract with each other.
Last I heard, the government is in the employ of the people. Not the other way around, despite Mr. Obama’s wishes.
It is we who maintain for our defense our military. We merely employ an administrator, namely the government, to provide the administrative duties and a congress to implement and represent our policy. But the country is ours, not the governments.
The reason free market health insurance won’t work is that insurance companies can’t make a profit off of sick people.
OK, so we aren’t paying rent–we’re hiring a staff to do the work of teaching our workers to read, making sure the roads to the office are built, protecting the office, inspecting the food so our workers don’t die, etc. The point is, as part of our social contract, we pay to make sure everyone is taken care of, including the sick and old–which won’t happen in a free market.
Ash, your comments here are astoundingly misinformed. Sorry to be so brusque but I (for one) don’t have enough time in the day to refute your plethora of gross fallacies.
Love, Ash has agreed in part. Thank you Ash for that. Please consider that perhaps some of your opinions are “received opinions”. Gays in particular seem to fall into this kind of reasoning.What I enjoy about this site is that we can discuss agreeable, even when we disagree, and perhaps we can learn as gay people how to respect differing opinions. Angry discourse is no discourse at all.
For the record, I said what I said with no anger – just telling the truth about my time budget vis a vis Ash’s comments.
P.S. And part of the background is that I have been in previous discussions w/Ash where he has said things to the general effect of, “How come no one is answering me?”
Love, I have read and have enjoyed several of your comments on other subjects, and I usually agree with you. I’m concerned that so many of our gay friends are led into the anti-christian and anti-conservative mind set.
But to be fair, although I am a christian, I am appalled by many of the comments of many christians. We should not be at war with each other!
How can thoughtful people, gay, straight, conservative, liberal begin to have a real dialogue? Is it merely wishful thinking?
man, good questions but I’m not the one to answer them. I just say what I think (or know to be true), and that is my spiel.
Again just fyi or for the record, I don’t claim to speak as a Christian in this forum. I respect many Christians and even go to bat for them sometimes. Perhaps you’ve caught me doing that before. I also respect certain atheists. I have a certain kind of relationship with God, and Jesus, that I don’t care to explain or identify in this forum, nor apply labels to (one way or another). Thus, in this forum I represent no particular religious viewpoint or standard of behavior. Peace!
Love, Although of course I have my own biases, I don’t represent anyone but myself. But then we all do have our biases, our histories, the belief and philosophical structures which we have either inherited or adopted, or both.
Anyway, it’s great to find others with whom one can share (and respect) common beliefs and concerns. Especially gays. Gets a bit lonely and depressing when one surveys the general gay political and philosophical situation.
Gays have had a tough time. So it’s not surprising that so many have turned to those whom they believe are more friendly. And certain “christian” leaders have certainly been unfriendly to those of us who are attracted to the same sex.
Anyway, you’ve heard it all before. I appreciate your thoughts, and am grateful for this site.
I think that being Christian leads me to a different kind of conservatism–one that takes into consideration the whole of life. For me, healthcare is part of the seamless garment of life issues which I believe reflects Scriptural values. I think we are called to care for the least of these, and I don’t think you can do that effectively and work for a profit. In the same way I support a government-backed military, a government-backed public school system, a government-backed transportation infrastructure, etc. I support a government-backed, single payer healthcare plan. Free market capitalists are not shackled by participating in the social contract which provides them with healthy, education workers who can drive to work.
“Federal laws currently prohibit the extension of domestic partner healthcare benefits and refuse to recognize same-sex relationships.”
So the problem is that the federal government is broken in that it does not recognise same-sex partnerships, and there are ramifications in terms of healthcare that is provided (or lack thereof).
While one way to fix it is to get the private sector involved, that doesn’t fix the underlying cause of the problem. You haven’t made any attempt to make the federal government better, you’ve just made a broken system less important.
Now that works fine in these circumstances, but that same broken system is in charge of other things too – social security, taxation and immigration are three of the more important things. While you could “fix” social security by privatising it as you have done with healthcare, you can’t privatise immigration or taxation. It doesn’t work.
Sooner or later you will have to fix the broken federal government, and get it to recognise same-sex couples. It just strikes me as odd that you’d rather not fix it now (and solve the other issues as mentioned), rather you want to stick a band aid over one particular area and proclaim to have fixed the issue in its entirety.
By government force?
Ash, you can care for people all you want: just give your money away. Your. Own. Money. There is nothing remotely Christian about being generous with other people’s money, whether by direct theft or by government force. Jesus said “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”; not “Vote for Caesar to rape your neighbors.”
Then don’t. Get out of the way and let someone else do it.
No, they’re shackled by absurdly high tax rates and DMV health care that is utterly inferior to what the market could deliver, if only it were allowed to.
(example: workers from Britain and Canada to Cuba and North Korea who die as they wait in line for operations)
We, as Americans, have a social contract to provide life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to each other. That is the reason for our existence as a community. For me, to fulfill that social contract means providing safety, transportation, education, etc., and healthcare. Since I don’t think healthcare can be provided with a profit motive (any more than people who teach or who serve in the military are doing it to turn a profit), I think it needs to be a government-backed program funded by those who are tied together by the above social contract.
Ashpenaz, the liberal/socialist part of me agrees with you in theory. If there was a way to provide nationalized health care that would really benefit all and without costs going through the roof, and a spiral to lower quality and efficient health care, I would be all for it.
But the cynical part of me says it just won’t happen. First of all, even in an ideal political climate here, I’m not sure it could happen. As such, the problem is that our politicians rely on too much money from lobbyists and supporters to come up with such a plan, that any nationalized plan will be diluted down some how, end up costing consumers more, red tape will increase, quality would decrease, while pharmaceutical, insurance, and health care companies profits go through the roof. As an example, see the pharmaceutical bill for seniors from a few years ago.
Your views do seem lined up with the positions of the Roman Catholic Church. Some of them I agree with, some I don’t. And if there was a way to make nationalized health care work, I’d agree with you and the Church as well on this issue.
If we do end up with any plan, I think it’s important that for most services there is some kind of co-payment, to limit waste of services. I recall V the K had some plan that seemed workable. The Patients Choice Act, as proposed, may be workable as well. Unfortunately, I don’t see our government, no matter which party is in charge implementing either, for reasons mentioned above, until enough changes are made that makes it unworkable.