Why We Need A Clean Repeal Of ObamaCare

The Daily Caller posted an article today about the first U.S. city to feel the effects of the failure of ObamaCare.

The article reports:

Knoxville, Tenn., could be the first city in the U.S. where Obamacare completely collapses, leaving tens of thousands of people without the option to buy a subsidized insurance policy.

Humana, the city’s only remaining insurance provider on its Obamacare exchange, announced it is exiting the market in 2018. If that happens, Knoxville citizens will be in a rough spot. Unless another insurance provider fills Humana’s place, some 40,000 people in the Knoxville area will likely be left without the option to purchase an Obamacare-subsidized insurance policy, CNN reports.

Knoxville is illustrative of one of the main problems with Obamacare: It doesn’t promote market-based competition. Insurers pull out of marketplaces where it is not cost-efficient for them to provide services, and, as a result, consumers are left with fewer options at higher prices.

When the government interferes with the free market, bad things happen.

Because of the collapse of ObamaCare, people will have to buy their insurance in the private marketplace. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee have proposed a bill that would allow consumers to purchase any state-approved health insurance plans with ObamaCare subsidies. Again, the government is interfering in the free market.

The health insurance industry is not the villain here. Insurance companies use statistical tables to determine rates. They are in business to make money and should be allowed to do so (although allowances should be made for pre-existing conditions and long-term issues). There are a few steps that can be taken to bring reason back into the health insurance market–tort reform, selling insurance across state lines,  and high risk pools for pre-existing conditions.

Texas succeeded in slowing the rise of health insurance premiums by tort reform. Unfortunately a large percentage of the campaign money that goes to Congressional campaigns comes from trial lawyers. That will make it very difficult to pass tort reform on a national level. This is another reason to get the federal government out of the health insurance business.

A Reasonable Alternative To ObamaCare

Yesterday Forbes posted an article about the Coburn-Burr-Hatch (CBH) proposal called the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility, and Empowerment Act.

The article reports:

CBH would repeal Obamacare, and replace it with a set of more market-oriented reforms. One key point right at the start: the authors “believe our proposal is roughly budget neutral over a decade.” That is to say, for all the reconfiguring it does to the health-care system, it doesn’t substantially reduce the deficit. It may modestly reduce the amount of federal spending and taxation. The Senate trio aims to have their proposal fiscally scored by an outside group of economists, most likely Doug Holtz-Eakin’s Center for Health and Economy.

The proposal includes a lot of aspects of ObamaCare that are popular, but it includes some common sense changes that will make ObamaCare much less of a burden on the American taxpayer. The proposal encourages tort reform, it makes changes to the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage in order to subsidize policies for the uninsured.

Please follow the above link to the article to see the details. This proposal may be the first step to putting health care back in the hands of patients and doctors and taking it out of the hands of the government.

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What Happens If ObamaCare Is Overturned ?

Last week Investor’s Business Daily asked the question, “What happens if ObamaCare is overturned?” That is a very good question.

It would not be good for Congressional Democrat campaigns–the Democrats spent a year on this bill–were they wasting their time? But what impact would it have on the Presidential campaign? Are there parts of the bill that the public approves of that could be written into law between now and November? Is Congress capable of writing anything into law between now and November?

The article reports:

The KFF survey found that letting 26-year-olds stay on their parents’ policy polled well, with 71% viewing it either very or somewhat favorably. Also polling favorably was prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a person’s medical history, 60%, and limiting what insurers can charge older people vs. the young, 52%.

The article then reminds us that these provisions could collapse the insurance market. The thing we need to remember here is that insurance companies are in business to make money. There is nothing immoral about that. If they are allowed to make money, they provide jobs and insurance for people. That’s a good thing. There does need to be some sort of allowance made for a high-risk pool similar to what is done with car insurance, and I would also support something that protects someone from being dropped because they have gotten sick and actually need their health insurance.

What is needed is a fresh start. Such things as insurance portability across state lines, tort reform, and tax breaks for consumers buying individual insurance would be a good beginning. I suspect, however, that any beginning will have to wait until after the November election.

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Another Reason The Establishment (Republican And Democrat) Dislike Rick Perry

"The Honorable Rick Perry (front right), ...

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Yesterday Investors.com posted an article about presidential candidate Rick Perry. Governor Perry is being attacked by a fairly wide variety of people, and it is kind of interesting to watch. Investors.com had some ideas as to why Governor Perry is seen as a threat by so many people.

The article reports:

Politico reports that “if Perry ends up as the Republican nominee for president, deep-pocketed trial lawyers intend to play a central role in the campaign to defeat him.”  Reporter Alexander Burns writes that “among litigators, there is no presidential candidate who inspires the same level of hatred — and fear — as Perry, an avowed opponent of the plaintiffs’ bar who has presided over several rounds of tort reform as governor.”

The article also points out that President Obama has publicly declared that he does not support caps on malpractice lawsuits. I’m sure it is just a coincidence that lawyers are the third largest contributors to Democrat party campaigns.

The article reminds us:

As Marc Ambinder pointed out in the Atlantic last year, “Seven of the last 11 major-party presidential candidates (Obama, Bush 43, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Bush 41, Dukakis), including all of the winners sans Ronald Reagan, have possessed an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard or Yale.”

Governor Perry is an implied threat to the grip the Ivy League has had on the White House in recent years. The article also cites examples of success in the business world by non-Ivy League businessmen such as Jack Welch of General Electric.

The article concludes:

Non-Ivy Leaguers such as Reagan and Welch often seem to be better at recognizing problems and bringing real change for the better. Maybe that’s why our elites are showing so much fear of an Aggie like Perry.

This is going to be an interesting election campaign. The question is, “Can a man from a less-than-privileged background become President?”

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Why Texas And Rick Perry Are Being Attacked From Many Directions

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The establishment Republican party does not want Rick Perry to run against President Obama in 2012–that is illustrated by the recent buzz about Paul Ryan or whether Sarah Palin would run. The Democrat party (and the liberal media) do not want Rick Perry to run–that is illustrated by recent attacks on both Texas and Rick Perry. For example, on August 22, Paul Krugman wrote an article in the New York Times about the low wages in Texas and the fact that job growth should have been better than it was.

He stated:

First, the debate over the alleged Texas miracle is not over whether Texas is in fact a miserable failure. All the critics need to show is that Texas is not in fact the miracle Perry claims. And it isn’t.

Second, defenders of the miracle claims seem remarkably unwilling to confront the key argument. People like me point out that Texas has not, in fact, been immune to the recession. Since there’s a long-term shift of population and jobs to Texas, you’d expect job growth in Texas to be higher than in the rest of the country even in a recession, and the key question is whether that growth has been sufficiently high to keep up with population — and it hasn’t.

Well, the Texas Public Policy Foundation begs to differ. They posted a rebuttal to one of Mr. Krugman’s attacks on the Texas economy. In their rebuttal, they point out:

 It’s a better bet that almost 1.9 million people have fled New York and Massachusetts over the last decade because they couldn’t find a job in those states, and that many of them came to Texas because there were jobs here for them because of our model of gover­nance incorporating low taxes and spending, a predictable, low level of regulation, and a sound civil justice system—with minimal federal interference.

From this perspective, the Texas Miracle is that Texas’ unemployment rate is only 8.2% after a net inflow of 781,542 job seekers and their families have come here looking for work. Not to mention the demand for work created by international migration and normal population growth. While New York’s 8% unemployment rate come after 1.5 million people left the state.

The Texas Model has led to strong economic growth for our state, and it can do the same for the entire country.

What are these attacks about? Under Rick Perry, the State of Texas has instituted tort reform. The state has also recently passed a law that requires the loser in a lawsuit to pay the court costs. Needless to say, this prevents a lot of unnecessary lawsuits and makes less work for lawyers.

These are the three top groups that contributed to the Democrat party in 2010:

 Candidate Committees     $58,923,992

 Retired                               $33,819,391

 Lawyers/Law Firms          $29,914,538

Rick Perry is a threat to both the Republican establishment and the Democrat party. His election would put tort reform nationwide on the table and might even result in a more reasonable court system.

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More Healthcare Waivers

The Hill reported Friday that the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) has granted another106 waivers to President Obama’s healthcare law. This brings the total number of waivers up to 1,472. The HHS has announced that it will stop granting waivers in September.

The article reports:

HHS has been approving a new batch of one-year waivers at the end of each month. The department announced it would cut off applications after September, but let companies that received one-year exemptions extend their waivers through 2014. The 106 waivers approved in July will last three years.

It seems to me that the logical thing to do at this point would be to repeal Obamacare and start over with ideas like tort reform and allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines. The idea of health insurance plans carried by an individual rather than with an employer, therefore going with a person when they changed jobs, would also be a really good idea!

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Some Notes On Romneycare And Healthcare In Texas

I could have figured this out without the chart below posted at Yahoo News:

One of the main things that makes the difference in the Texas health insurance premiums is the law passed on Texas regarding medical lawsuits.

According to the article:

Perry’s most significant achievement on health care was a successful 2003 attempt to convince voters, over the determined opposition of trial lawyers, to amend the Texas Constitution to cap non-economic medical malpractice damages at $250,000 from a physician and $500,000 from hospitals and other providers: an issue that most physicians believe is at the heart of what drives wasteful health spending.

The article also points out some of the other factors involved in Governor Perry’s successful healthcare reform in Texas–the legislature Governor Perry was dealing with in Texas was made up of conservative Republicans, when Romneycare was passed in Massachusetts, Governor Romney was dealing with a liberal Democrat legislature.  Governor Romney probably prevented Romneycare from being even worse than it is.  The other thing to consider is that generally the cost of living in Massachusetts is higher than the cost of living in Texas.  The article cites a CNBC survey that ranks Texas eighth-best, and Massachusetts ninth-worst, for cost of living.

The article also has a chart showing how the law in Texas has impacted malpractice claims:

I think the chart above is one of the best arguments for tort reform that I have seen.

Please follow the link to the article at Yahoo News–there is a lot of good information there and also a few very illustrative charts.

The article concludes:

As I said at the top, who you favor between Romney and Perry will depend in large part upon what your priorities are in health care policy. My personal view is that universal coverage is meaningless, if the ultimate consequence of universal coverage is that people can’t afford, or gain access to, basic health care. It is Rick Perry’s Texas that has done more to keep the growth of health costs down, and we should spend more time drawing lessons from his Lone Star State.

Governor Romney is a very nice man.  I think he did a reasonable job as governor of Massachusetts, but I for one am ready for a Rick Perry in the White House.