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Coburn

Coburn: Health Care Solutions Are Very Simple

March 14, 2019 by GregC

Listen to “Coburn: Health Care Solutions Are Very Simple” on Spreaker.

Republican struggled and failed to overhaul Obamacare.  Many Democrats want the government to run health care entirely.  But former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn says health care costs would plummet and choices would flourish if we simply bring transparency to the system.

A longtime doctor before entering the political arena, Coburn says patients would benefit enormously from price transparency and knowing the results that other patients have had from various providers.  He says all sides agree that health care costs consume 20 percent of the nation’s GDP, but he says there’s a much better way to address this than putting the government in charge of everything.

“We have multiple studies by reputable groups that said anywhere from $500 billion to a trillion dollars a years doesn’t help anybody get well and doesn’t prevent anybody from getting sick.  So how do you fix that?

“You fix that with what was proposed by the Trump administration, calling first for price transparency for everybody in health care.  Because once net prices are published, you’re going to have 100,000 people making apps to show people how to get the best deal.

“Once you have price transparency, then you’re going to have outcome transparency because what will happen is all the prices will settle down to the most competitive.  Then the differentiating factor will be, ‘What are your outcomes?  What’s your infection rate?  What’s your major complication rate?  What’s your average hospital stay for this?  What’s your re-operation rate?'”

“All of a sudden we will start buying health care like we buy everything else in the country,” said Coburn.

The fight for transparency won’t be easy.  Coburn says there are a lot of powerful entities who have incentive to keep the bloated system in place.

“Who’s opposed to that?  All the hospitals, all the big insurers, all the drug companies, all the pharmacy benefit managers, and everybody else that’s a middle man in health care that sucks money out but doesn’t add value,” said Coburn.

But is this just theory or are these ideas actually working somewhere? Listen to the full podcast as Coburn explains how price and outcome transparency is proving wildly successful in his home state.  He also explains why our education system is utterly failing the young people clamoring for government-run care.

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Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: Coburn, health care, Medicare-for-all, news, Obamacare, transparency

Coburn Details Convention of States

June 2, 2017 by GregC

http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/6-2-coburn-cos-blog.mp3

After concluding Washington is incapable of solving some of America’s biggest problems over his 16 years in Congress, former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says a constitutionally provided convention of the states is the only realistic remedy to what ails us.

Article V of the Constitution allows for amendments through a convention of two-thirds of the states proposing changes that would then need to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.  Currently, 34 states would need to get on board to force Congress to call a convention and 38 states would need to approve any proposed amendments.

“Before our constitutional convention, everything was decided through a convention like this,” said Coburn, who points out George Mason insisted on the inclusion of the convention of the states option after pointing out no government in history has ever given back power to the people.

Coburn further explained the process.

“You have to an application that aggregates (among the states).  You have to have the same application everywhere.  You can’t have one application for a balanced budget and one application for something else.  You have to have 34 that say the same thing,” said Coburn.

The current push for a convention of the states calls for three amendments: one to balance the budget, one to rein in the reach of the federal government , and one to limit the length of terms in the House and Senate.

Coburn says a balanced budget amendment is desperately needed.

“We think the federal government ought to be fiscally responsible.  They ought to have to live under the same accounting guidelines everybody else does and they ought to have to live within their means,” said Coburn.  “That’s a balanced budget amendment but it also means you can’t just go and add mandates to the states to balance the budget.  You have to make hard choices.”

Congress came within one vote of approving a balanced budget amendment in 1995, just months after Republicans won control of both chambers.  The plan passed the House 300-132, but the 65-35 tally in the Senate was just shy of sending the amendment to the states.

The vote was really 66-34, but when it was clear the measure would fail then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, changed his vote to no so he would be eligible under Senate rules to reconsider the issue.  A subsequent vote also failed.

Since 1995, no balanced budget proposal has come anywhere close to passing, and Coburn says that should come as no surprise.

“They don’t want to balance the budget, because then they have to make hard choices, then they have to be accountable to their electorate.  If the electorate doesn’t like the choices that they made, they’ll replace them.  It’s an insurance policy if I don’t have to have a balanced budget,” said Coburn.

“The easiest thing in the world is to spend somebody else’s money and that’s what they do every day.  They spend our grandchildren’s money because we’re certainly not spending our own right now,” said Coburn.

Next on the amendment list is to “limit the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government.”  Coburn says a ridiculous case from 1942 effectively gave the federal government to meddle far too intimately in our lives.

“An Ohio wheat farmer grew 18 acres more wheat than he was allotted, but he used every bit of it to feed his own cattle, his own family and used it for feed the next year.  The federal government said that’s interstate commerce because you didn’t buy that 18 acres worth of wheat from somewhere else,” said Coburn.

“So they expanded the commerce clause and that is what has allowed the federal government to tell every state – in everything they do now – what to do,” said Coburn.

Coburn says returning power to state and local authorities also heightens accountability, pointing out it is much easier to get an appointment with your state representative than a member of the House or Senate.

Coburn cited a recent poll showing 86 percent of Americans don’t trust the federal government.  He says that places America in a crisis that returning power to states and locales can help to address.

“When you quit trusting the central authority, then you will no longer follow its will.  That’s called anarchy.  So we have to take back our freedom.  We have to re-establish the rule of law and make sure it’s followed.  But also it has to have the integrity of the central government in terms of a limited federal government,” said Coburn.

The third and final amendment Coburn and his allies are pushing would limit lawmakers to 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and 12 years in the U.S. Senate.

“Prior to a Supreme Court ruling in 1994, 26 states had limited the terms of their members of Congress.  In an Arkansas case, the Supreme Court decided that we as citizens can’t decide whether we want to limit the terms of our federal representatives.  Well that’s ludicrous.  So what you do is pass an amendment that puts a limit on the amount of time people can serve,” said Coburn.

Coburn says 12 states are already on board.  He expects another 10-12 states to join the effort in the next 12 months and another 10-12 in the year after that, meaning a convention of states could take place within two to three years.

He is quick to stress that the convention itself cannot ratify the amendments.  That role still belongs to the states.  Coburn is bullish on that front as well, noting that Republicans are just 24 seats away from controlling the legislatures in 38 states.

Ultimately, Coburn believes the success or failure of this campaign will depend upon the courage to do what has to be done.

“Do we have the moral structure with which to make these hard decisions for the future or do we just let this train run out of control down the mountain?  That’s the real question,” said Coburn.

“If you love your kids, you love your country, and you love your future, you ought to be about choking down the federal government and having it live within its means, lessening it’s impact on the economy so the economy can actually grow,” said Coburn.

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Filed Under: News & Politics, Podcasts Tagged With: budget, Coburn, convention, government, limited, limits, news, states, term

Coburn Details Why We Need Convention of the States

May 31, 2017 by GregC

http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/5-31-coburn-problem-blog.mp3

Dr. Tom Coburn spent 16 years in Congress and quit because lawmakers refused to make tough choices to spare future generations the burden of crushing debt, and he is now calling for a Convention of the States so state and local leaders can do the work Washington politicians refuse to address.

Coburn served Oklahoma in the House of Representatives from 1995-2001.  He was elected twice to the U.S. Senate before resigning in 2015.  He is also the author of ” Smashing the DC Monopoly: Using Article V to Restore Freedom and Stop Runaway Government.”

Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides two ways for amendments to be enacted.  The more common way is for both chambers of Congress to approve an amendment by two-thirds majorities, followed by three-quarters of the states ratifying the proposal.  However, Article V also allows for two-thirds of states to convene and approve amendments which would still require approval by three-quarters of the states.

Coburn says business as usual in Washington proves politicians are not up to the task of reining in government.

“Everybody said things would change in 2010.  Then they said things would change in 2014.  Then they said things would change in 2016,” said Coburn, who contends there’s a very simple explanation for why those campaign promises are not kept.

“Most members of Congress are conflicted and the conflict is this: Do I do what’s best for the country and maybe lose my election or do I do what’s best for my political career so I can maintain my status as an elite?” said Coburn.  “The desire for power, which our founders very well knew, trumps everything else.”

Among Coburn’s biggest frustrations is how public service has become a career for so many, rather than lawmakers serving for a brief time and then returning to their private lives.

“If you didn’t have career politicians, they wouldn’t be looking for the next office.  It’s not the public service is in any way dishonorable.  It’s that motives for most of those that run today is to get and hold and advance power,” said Coburn.

As a result he says people who want to make tough choices to tackle problems like debt and spending are scorned for putting their colleagues in a difficult position.

“Their peers say, ‘Don’t do that.  We’ll have to make all these hard choices.  We’ll get beat up here.’  What they need is an excuse to do the right thing” said Coburn.

“They need an excuse to be able to come home and say, ‘I’m sorry I had to cut this program because we have to balance the budget.  It’s dishonorable to borrow against your children.  We’re going to make these hard choices and if you don’t want to re-elect me it’s fine.  I’ll be happy to go back to my real job,'” said Coburn.

“But the problem is two-thirds of the people in Washington have never had a real job,” said Coburn.

Coburn says the 1995 federal government shutdown is a perfect example of lawmakers refusing to stick to their principles and allowing government to spiral out of control.  The Republicans eventually buckled in the face of intense media and political pressure, and GOP leaders have been very reluctant to even threaten such a move ever since.

Coburn was a House freshman at the time and says Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

“What we saw post-collapse of the Republican leadership was that the president was getting ready to cede the spending cuts that we wanted to make.  Had we had those spending cuts, you wouldn’t be running half-trillion and trillion dollar deficits,” said Coburn.

“Leadership can either go on the basis of courage or on the basis of fear, and what you’re seeing in Washington from the career politicians is fear.” he said.

“If you’re going to shut the government down, don’t open it up until you’ve won everything you need to win.  Take the heat and lose your slot.  Is it better for a politician to lose an election and the country to be better off or is it better for the politician to maintain power and the kids that come after us suffer dearly,” said Coburn.

Coburn was re-elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, but walked away in January 2015 with two years remaining in his term.  Was it because Congress was doing nothing to honor its promises to get the nation’s fiscal house in order?

“It was 100 percent (that),” said Coburn.  “I had told the majority leader two years before I left that I was going to leave if things didn’t change, if we didn’t start addressing the real issues, if his leadership wasn’t going to address the real issues.  If he didn’t put people in position to address the real issues, there’s no reason to stay there and participate and get an ‘Atta boy’ because you’re a senator but you’re not actually accomplishing anything for the future of our country,” said Coburn.

“Nothing happened so I went to him and said, “I told you I was leaving.  I’m leaving.’  I did and it was a good decision because now I’m working on the solution big enough to solve the problem,and that’s the Article V amendments convention,” said Coburn.

He says this is America’s best chance to get the ship headed in the right direction.

“The real question for you and the average American family, whether you’re liberal or conservative, is who gets to decide.  Is it an un-elected bureaucrat in Washington or is it you as a free citizen in this country,” said Coburn.

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Filed Under: News & Politics, Podcasts Tagged With: career, Coburn, convention, news, politicians, states, Washington

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