Do Republicans Have a Health Plan?
By Mike King
There was snickering on the Republican side of the aisle during Wednesday’s State of the Union speech when President Obama challenged detractors of health care reform to bring him an alternative plan that works. It may have been uncomfortable laughter on their part because the party, as a whole, has no real alternative to offer.
We often hear from Georgia’s senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, as well as the leader of the Georgia House delegation on health issues, Rep. Tom Price, that health reform can be achieved with market-based solutions, such as allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, as well as the party’s favorite excuse for escalating health costs — baseless malpractice suits. Even if legislation dealing with those two issues was passed, the numbers of currently uninsured Americans being able to afford new policies and the bend of the cost curve by malpractice reform would be incremental, at best. And when the GOP was in power in the White House and Congress, it’s interesting to note — as this report on NPR and Kaiser Health News does – that there was hardly any party unity on either issue.
In truth, there was no zeal to do anything about health care reform when the GOP was in power, demonstrated by George Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan reauthorization. (Except, of course, unless you count the huge expansion of Medicare when he and Congress agreed to add $700 billion to the deficit by establishing a prescription drug benefit for Medicare patients. Where was the concern for the deficit then?)
As anyone who has studied health care policy has come to learn, occasional tweaking of the massive health care financing and delivery system rarely results in long-term reform or savings. And proposing comprehensive reform — like the effort in 1993-94, and this one now — is inherently complex, subject to willful misinformation by politicians and special interests, and demanding good faith negotiations and uncomfortable trade-offs (i.e. requiring everyone to have insurance so that everyone can afford insurance). That’s why nothing major ever gets accomplished.
The ball’s on the GOP side of the aisle now. Let’s see what they’ve got.
Mike King is a retired journalist who specializes in writing about health policy issues. He also serves as editor and administrator of the Healthy Debate blog.
