Posted on 02/23/2015 8:10:30 PM PST by Jim Robinson
The GOP needs a politically defensible alternative if the Supreme Court overturns federal-exchange subsidies.
On March 4 the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, with a decision expected in late June. If the court strikes down the payment of government subsidies to those who bought health insurance on the federal exchange, Republicans will at last have a real opportunity to amend ObamaCare. Doing so, however, will be politically perilous.
The language of the Affordable Care Act states that subsidies should only be paid through state exchanges. The bill’s authors perhaps believed that pressure from citizens and the health-care providers who would benefit would entice states to set up exchanges. But, faced with mounting technical problems in setting up the exchanges, the Obama administration decided—legally or illegally—to allow subsidies to be paid through a federally run exchange. Therefore, political pressure that might have convinced states to set up exchanges never developed.
The political pressures to set up state exchanges if federal subsidies are now struck down will be enormous...
~~snip~~
Republicans need a strategy that is easy to understand, broadly popular and difficult to oppose. It must unite Republicans and divide congressional Democrats, while empowering Republican governors and legislators to resist administration pressure. I believe that strategy is what I would call “the freedom option.” Every American should have the right to decide not to participate in ObamaCare: If you like ObamaCare and its subsidies, you can keep it. If you don’t, you are free to buy the health insurance that fits your needs.
The freedom option would fulfill the commitment the president made over and over again about ObamaCare: If you like your health insurance you can keep it...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I am afraid it is fading in the rear view mirror.
G.K. Chesterton considered himself a member of the Liberal Party until 1912. As he would later say, he did not leave the Liberal Party. It left him. He believed in something called liberty, the idea that people should be able to make most decisions for themselves, especially the most basic and most important decisions, and not have such decisions made for them by anyone else, especially by the government. He believed, as a liberal, that the State’s role was to preserve liberty, not take it away.
What happened in 1912? The Liberal Party, which held power in Parliament, passed The Health Insurance Act. Every working man was required to have part of his wages withheld to pay for a national health insurance. The funding was to be further supplemented by a tax on every employer. Sound familiar?
Chesterton’s objections to the Insurance Act were threefold. First, it was anti-democratic in practice. The vast majority of the English population was against it. It was being passed against their will, but—so the argument went—for their own good. Second, it was anti-democratic in principle. It divided the populace into two permanent castes: those who labor, and those who pay for the labor. Chesterton called this what it is: slavery. Third, Chesterton saw the Act as paving the way to the State seizing more power, more influence, more interference in everyone’s daily lives. Sound familiar?
About a century later, here in America, we are looking at essentially the same thing that Chesterton was looking at. We watched as a National Health Care program was passed in utter defiance of public support, rammed through the legislative process by one party rather than by any sort of consensus. We have also watched the reinforcement of a system comprised of employers and employees, of wage-earners rather than independent, self-sufficient and truly “self-employed” citizens. And we have also watched the unimaginable growth of government as it has insinuated itself into every aspect of our lives.
One of Chesterton’s strongest objections to the Insurance Act was the increase in taxes to those who could scarcely afford to have any of their income taken from them, even if it was to be used for something specific like health care. The tax prevented a man from paying for other needs he had that might be just as important as medical care. He was being forced to pay for medical care that he might not need. What other things that he did not need would the State decide he must also pay for?
Chesterton pointed out that a compulsory Health Insurance Act was first passed in Germany. It followed another compulsory act that was also first passed in Germany: compulsory education. Chesterton was a vocal opponent of state-sponsored compulsory education, for the same reasons he was against a national health insurance. It was an attack on freedom. It gave the government too much power, and it took away a basic freedom from the citizen. The liberal argument was that the State was providing a valuable service. Chesterton’s counter-argument was that though the State was providing education, it was the State’s education. Though it was providing medicine, it was a forced medicine. With a compulsory insurance, he argued, people were being forced to pay to be protected against themselves. People are often willing to trade freedom for security. But the problem is that it is usually someone else trading our freedom for our security.
Although Chesterton found himself allied with the conservatives on the issue of health care, he might point out now that one of the reasons we have gotten into the present mess was that health care became an industry, controlled by large corporations rather than independent practitioners, and every industry tends to grow till it forms an alliance with big government. When health care started becoming too expensive, the solution was supposed to be health insurance. But insurance quickly made health care even more expensive. On the one hand, the medical industry stopped worrying about being affordable; on the other, a new layer of private bureaucracy and overhead was added that also needed to be paid for. Is there a solution? Yes. There is one drastic solution.
But sometimes issues of health require drastic measures. The health care system needs radical surgery. The honest thing to do is do away with health insurance. Doctors and hospitals and clinics should start selling a product that people can afford, and that they should not have to buy unless they actually need the product. It should not cost a thousand dollars to treat an ingrown toenail. But it does. It should not cost $30,000 to set a broken arm. But it does. Ours is a system that cannot be sustained. That is why the government feels justified to step in.
Chesterton prophesied this very scenario. He warns that the State cannot become a Universal Provider without becoming just another big shop. The one thing we’ve seen about big shops is that they collapse. We can avoid the big collapse if we start getting small again. We might even get healthy again.
GilbertMagazine—Dale Ahlquist for the editorial board of Gilbert Magazine
*This editorial appeared in the April/May 2010 issue of Gilbert Magazine
Freedom, what a concept!
Obamacare shouldn’t even exist.
Alas, America is no longer about freedom, it’s about getting hordes of idiots sucking away at the government teat.
The freedom to opt out and shop in the private market — I like it.
Too many people getting their health care paid for by insurance companies, means higher health care costs for everyone.
We need to make health insurance illegal and its sale or purchase a criminal offense.
Then, and only then, will we see real health care reform.
Gramm. GOP reject. The GOP preferred Dole and the Bushes.
My head hurts ...
It is no coincidence that the ending of quantitative easing QEs, coincides with the commencement of this so called, “ACA”. They could no longer “get the take” from MBS, as the housing scam crashed.
“ACA” is the commencement of Body Mortgages on every U.S. citizen.
Escalating punishing fines, called “tax”, and moveable “out of thin air” deductibles. Body mortgages, bought and sold.
We need a modern day Sam Adams.
I think with advances like eye surgery that aren’t tainted by health insurance coverage the public has been able to get a taste of what doctors and medical workers can do to make their products affordable when they are given actual incentive to do so. I continually hope that this eventually inspires the rest of America to see Obamacare and fed takeover of health in general to be the parasitic practice it is.
Thank You for that terrific editorial!
History does tend to repeat itself, doesn’t it?
USG no longer represents the law, they do whatever they want. USG no long represents USA, they have been bought by enemies foreign and domestic.
What I say is evidenced by USG declaring such as above are illegal, _we_ are now the terrorists, they say. Wow, the law abiding, righteous ones, USG declares to be their enemy.
At this point in time, our freedom is in the hands of those states that are willing to assert their sovereignty and constitutional right to reject unconstitutional federal laws. Obamacare would be a fine start.
I agree. Make it totally free market. The government’s role would be what the police already are doing — finding and prosecuting insurance fraud. Fraudulent health insurance policy gets sold, then that company should get slammed.
Other than that, let people buy what coverages they want and anyplace in the country they want. Watch the prices drop.
For the pre-existing conditions that no one wants to sell insurance to, we either get to let them die or find a way to help them out. The Christian thing to do is to help them out. How? A state or national pool for them to join that takes their money and then ads to it as THEY buy a policy from a real insurance company pricing this stuff out.
For the uninsured poor and unemployed, I’d use the existing county health clinics around the country as triage. Sick folks go there and get triaged. They don’t just go to a doctor or hospital. If they need to go on to a more specialized center, then they do.
Then, the same as any other policy, they have an annual limit that gets spent and it can only be on sickness and not on cosmetic or voluntary procedures that aren’t related to actual physical ailment or impairment. (No sex changes paid for.)
I’m surprised (not) the republicans don’t have an alternative plan yet. the house has been voting for years to repeal Obamacare, but have never voted on a better plan. they should’ve united behind one long ago if they were serious about getting rid of it.
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