Five Conservative Ideas for State Level Healthcare Reform

Posted on August 12th, 2009

Let me start by saying that I believe that our first order of business in discussing healthcare reform is to make a commitment to preserve State’s Rights regarding Federal Health Insurance Exchanges (FHIE) and a Public Plan.

In order to address the inevitable demagogues and leftist simpletons let me be clear about the fact that I share the goal that patients deserve to choose their own quality, affordable, private health coverage. Second, I believe that the criticism directed at conservatives for not offering a Federal plan on health care is invalid if you believe, as I do, that the U.S. Constitution specifically delegates that responsibility to the States. While I admit that we are, here and now, faced with a situation that that is less than ideal from a Constitutional perspective and some compromise is inevitable, the direction of compromise of conservative Congressmen and Senators should not be a slower pace toward socialized medicine, but instead restoring power to the states. That develops a “policy laboratory” where health care reform plans succeed or fail based upon their validity.

If liberals think their ideas are the best, then they have nothing to fear, socialized medicine will succeed in the states based upon its merits. Perhaps they could try it in a state that has the most millionaires or highest per capita income. If it can’t succeed in a state where all the rich people live, how could it succeed when you include the poor states? Besides, poor southern states could stand to benefit from the droves of businesses moving in to avoid the excessive taxation and oppressive regulations that would inevitably result.

This is the beauty of the American system: Success and failure, living and dying, is not decided by the whims, bribes, or folly of some far-away nameless, faceless, unaccountable bureaucrat; Success and failure, living and dying, is decided by the animating contest of life as a free person, that at least to some degree, depends upon how hard you fight. Remove a human from that “animating contest”, and you take away what it means to be alive… you end up with Marcus’s One-Dimensional Man. At best, President Obama’s health care reform will create a “Comfortable Unfreedom”, at worst we end up with tyranny trying to enforce an unworkable and unsustainable economic failure.

Here is my advice at the federal level:

• I urge Congress not to create a new federal health insurance “exchange” or “connector” and not to create a new government-sponsored health insurance plan (“public plan”). I will try to discuss the problems with each of these in future posts.
  
• I think conservative Congressmen should invoke the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution in calling the national health insurance exchange a “federal takeover” of the states’ role in regulating health insurance.
  
• Conservatives should call any creation of a new federal system of regulation for health insurance exactly what it is… “inefficient, unnecessary, not cost-effective, and an additional burden on the health care delivery system.”
  
• I call on Congress to recognize that a public plan would not improve competition, but would “result in an unlevel playing field that would shift costs to the private sector and undermine private plans.”

Five Conservative Ideas for State Level Healthcare Reform:

• Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act: Preserves patient rights to make health coverage decisions in the state constitution. [Introduced by seven states in the 2009 session.]
  
• Health Care Choice Act for States: Allows patients to purchase quality, affordable health coverage across state lines. [Introduced by 10 states in the 2009 session.]
  
• Health Care Tax Relief Equity Act: Promotes tax equality by providing state tax credits for both the purchase of individual health insurance policies and out-of-pocket medical expenses.
  
• Affordable Health Insurance Act: Provides state tax breaks to individuals, businesses, and insurers who buy/sell high-deductible health plans. [Enacted in Georgia in the 2008 session.]
  
• Mandated Benefits Review Act: Provides an institutional check on costly health insurance mandates that keep people uninsured. [Twenty-nine states have enacted this legislation.]

I will provided detailed information on these five ideas in upcoming posts.

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2 Responses to “Five Conservative Ideas for State Level Healthcare Reform”

1. Christan Says:
   August 13th, 2009 at 12:26 pm

   I don’t see any beauty in a system where a childs mortality is based on the wealth of their parents. No child has a greater right to life than another. It is a dog eat dog world but don’t pretend that gives you any moral justification for allowing children to go without adequate healthcare.

2. Paul Thompson Says:
   January 9th, 2010 at 1:43 pm

   Health reform will injure our system.