[Stephen Ferry, El Dorado Hills]
Being heavily involved with the Tea Party Patriots I feel it necessary to speak up about the issue of Health Care in general and then about what our federal elected representatives have done to health care. First, health care should be about health, not social programs. Just think how the Democrats O’care changed the workplace environment. Employers were financially forced to limit their employees to just 49 to avoid the mandatory participation, employees were limited to 29 hours a week without O’care penalties. How does that get put into health care?
The Republicans come back to bat and they create a new plan that no one had the time to assimilate. We do know that the American Health Care Act (AHCA) was presented as a Reconciliation Bill which only requires 50 votes in the Senate because it does not eliminate the original O’care, it only changes it. Therefore no 60 Senate Vote requirement. We know that it would eliminate the $500,000,000 subsidy to the abortion providing Planned Parenthood. It would also save a great deal of money but it would not Replace O’care as promised.
It appears the Republicans are following with the Tom Price bill which they have had since 2009, with changes since but as of 2014 had 58 cosponsors (look up the “Empowering Patients First Act” on Wikipedia). Congress has had the time to read and digest this bill. Look it up and read the 11 page Summary. This act repeals the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replaces it. This should be an acceptable solution that even appeals to the Tea Party.
However, let’s think how we could simplify this entire issue. How about an act that mimics automobile insurance, if you own a car you must have auto insurance. If you have a body you must have body/health insurance. As with auto insurance, the public can decide on just how much insurance they want to have, i.e. deductibles, total coverage, etc. If I am a young couple I can chose pregnancy coverage and if older maybe substantial coverage for end of life issues. To do all this we need to have a competitive marketplace and that means; 1. being able to buy insurance across state lines, 2. ability to form co-ops to get better pricing 3. Tort reform limiting awards (done at the state level). 4. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor 5. Most important, Fund this through state grants and get the federal government out of the health care business. The states will know how best to spend their allocations for the poor without federal interference, and neither national party will have to continually defend their health care initiatives.
I have spoken to some hospital industry executives and the biggest issue I conclude is that national health care cannot work because of the diversity of the states. They were afraid that the Republican’s bill would pass and they would be back on starvation funding. California has almost 9,000,000 people receiving social benefit funding from welfare to food stamps. It has a great number of undocumented/illegal people on benefit programs as well. That is a whole lot different than Idaho or Indiana. One health plan cannot not fit all states and we saw that last November in the vote.
The only reason to create complicated plans is to pay off representative’s constituents from unions to industry and everyone in between. At least sending the money to the states let’s the taxpayer have better insight into the use of the funding. The Tea Party has always been in favor of programs being given to the states to mitigate or eliminate government overreach. I want to see the Department of Education and other agencies be put back to the states so that the petrie dishes of future advancement can flourish rather than be stymied by the federal bureaucracy. Let’s do health care better!
Steve Ferry
