Health Care Reform Act Debate

Dr. Marcie Keller has a posting on the Frum Forum blog today bemoaning the absence of tort reform in the recently passed health care reform law and predicting the failure of the reform effort.

In reality tort reform is an area where there is the possibility of bipartisan agreement and it probably could have been included in the original legislation if the Republicans were willing to negotiate. It is still possible to enact meaningful tort reform. Scrapping the entire bill and reverting to the earlier status quo will not lead to tort reform.

We are attempting to reform an extremely expensive and complex non-system over the next few years and the imperfections of the current law will have to be addressed. The president has already agreed that provision mandating that small businesses file 1099s for purchases exceeding $600 has to be looked at again but that also means finding other cost reductions or revenue increases to offset the lost revenue.

The fundamental moral issue of health care in this nation remains that it is unconscionable to cause middle class families to go into bankruptcy or for American citizens to die because of lack of health care due to the high cost and inaccessibility to insurance.

During the entire messy debate and even now the Republicans have not offered a workable alternative to address this moral issue. During the campaign the Republican leadership was unwilling to allow a debate of the reforms proposed by Representative Ryan because they knew that once you go beyond the simplistic political rhetoric and start discussing the details the issues become clearer and more contentious.

Kicking off the 2012 presidential campaign season (we couldn’t even get a one week break) Mitch McConnell is ramping up the rhetoric by labeling the Affordable Health Care for America Act the “health spending bill” and making it the centerpiece of the Republican campaign to defeat President Obama. So rather than constructively addressing this problem he will be arguing for a return to the status quo.

Politically I can’t fault him because his approach has worked for the last two years and why change that which is working. But he is asking a growing minority of our nation to sacrifice their individual freedom, and in some cases their lives, to achieve a Republican political goal. Furthermore the Republicans have yet to offer a plan that will significantly reduce health care costs.

Is it too much to hope that the media ask them for more details and specific proposals?

 

Comments

[Jane]

How can we ever be able to rest without a public health care plan? You lose your job,you lose your health care. It's despicable to think that people lose their entire livelihoods due to political payoffs.