The Party of No

In the Sunday Weekly section of this Sunday's Watertown Daily Times, four potential Republican candidates for Congress were asked to discuss health care reform. Unfortunately, we heard very little for GOP ideas, but instead were subjected to slamming of the potential Democratic legislation.


Doug Hoffman offered the least – only slamming Obama, Pelosi, Bill Owens and the Senate health care bill – while actually using the word “no” in his statement to describe his point of view. He also promoted conspiracy theories and fear-mongering without providing one single proposal of his own. Very weak in my opinion, and just a continuation of his previous run.

The “King of No” title has to go to Paul Maroun, though. Six consecutive statements began with “We should not...” His only reforms are what he calls “gap” coverage, tort reform and being able to purchase health insurance across state lines. I am all for those ideas but believe they will only have a relatively small impact on health care, though. What about the tens of millions of Americans without health insurance? What should we do about that?

Will Barclay’s sole proposal is tort reform. Will’s numbers don’t completely add up there, however: One study he referred to estimates that defensive medicine costs $200 billion a year (which by the way is less than 10% of health-care costs), while another study referred to 25% in additional costs. I find it highly unlikely that there are more than $500 billion in additional tests and procedures done in the name of defensive medicine. 20% of all medical costs? I’ll need to see some hard numbers before I believe that. Nevertheless, I am in favor of tort reform, because I think it’s the right thing to do, not because I think it’s going to reduce our country’s medical costs by that high an amount. However, Mr. Barclay also avoided all the other issues out there: Medicare and Medicaid reform, the uninsured and underinsured, ER staffing and nurse shortages, and so on. But Will thinks we have the best health care in the world, and based on that and some of the other statistics he threw out there it sounds like he’d pretty much like to leave things alone. What defines “best health care” anyways? Do we spend the most per capita on health care? Sure. But is it the best? In my studies, a great number of European countries have excellent health care, covering all citizens, at a lower cost per capita than we pay. Isn’t that better, at least on some level?

Matt Doheny also spent a good deal of his time criticizing the Democratic proposals. However, he did devote a majority of his essay to reform issues. Like Maroun and Barclay, Matt placed a lot of emphasis on tort reform. Although there’s one thing about tort reform these gentlemen need to remember: tort reform will not eliminate malpractice claims or defensive medicine – it will only reduce them – and nobody knows to what degree. Another of Doheny’s ideas is making the cost of health insurance tax-deductible. I assume he means 100% tax-deductible, since health insurance costs can already be itemized and are deductible, along with other out-of-pocket medical costs, for the amount over 7.5% of AGI. Matt also addressed access programs for those with pre-existing conditions. I only wish he had specifically discussed those without insurance at all.

As a Republican I would like to see solid proposals by the Republican candidates, not the criticism and nay-saying that made up the bulk of these responses. If the candidates have not developed plans of their own, then they should at least endorse competing proposals from GOP representatives. Unfortunately, The Party of No has primarily been in reactive mode since the Democrats made it a priority to enact health care reform legislation. Not that the Democrats are completely faultless – after all, they have pretty much cut the Republicans out of the process. Hopefully that will change now that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority. I’d like to see proposed legislation that takes the best ideas from both parties and incorporates them into a reform program that provides affordable health insurance access to all, while cleaning up some of the other messes out there.