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Public Option = Government-Run Health Care

July 17, 2019 by GregC

Listen to “Public Option = Government-Run Health Care” on Spreaker.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is once again staying very close to President Obama, this time billing his health care plan as Obamacare 2.0 and even promising once again that Americans who like their private health coverage can keep it.

The Obama-Biden administration repeated that promise over and over as part of the debate over the Affordable Care Act.  Due to the regulatory changes of the law, plans could not stay the same.  Americans were forced into more comprehensive plans and some carriers dropped their customers altogether.

As a result, Politifact named “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” the Lie of the Year in 2013.

Biden is now positioning himself as a moderate in the Democratic field for 2020.  He says a Medicare for All approach that would abolish private insurance and leave the government in complete control is a bridge too far.  Instead he is pushing a public option – a government-run plan that would compete with private coverage.

“If you like your plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it.  If in fact, you have private insurance, you can keep it,” said Biden on Monday.

But what Biden labels a moderate approach Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner sees as a mere stepping stone to government-run health care that kills private sector health coverage.

“The federal government has unlimited calls on taxpayer dollars.  It can write the rules that everybody has to comply with.  Private plans will not be able to compete, so people will inevitably lose their private plans simply because they will go under,” said Turner.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Turner explain in greater detail how a public option would ultimately force private insurers out of business, what approach she believes is far better than a public option or Medicare for All, and how Americans are approaching this critical debate.

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Filed Under: News & Politics, Podcasts Tagged With: 2020, Biden, government, insurance, news, obama, option, public

Tea Party Cheers Nuking of Unprecedented “Partisan Filibuster”

April 6, 2017 by GregC

http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/4-6-martin-blog.mp3

Senate Republicans voted to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees Thursday after Democrats refused to advance the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to a final vote, a move grassroots conservatives say had to happen out of respect for the Constitution.

Republicans cited the precedent of Democrats from November 2013, when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid led a rules change to kill the filibuster for lower court judicial nominees and executive branch personnel requiring confirmation.

The move came after a 55-45 vote to end debate on Gorsuch, five votes short of the 60 votes needed.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell then moved to consider the Gorsuch nomination under the rule change instituted by Democrats.  His motion was denied, but McConnell then appealed the ruling of the chair and the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees was killed in a party line vote.

While Democrats call the move an attack on democracy, Tea Party Patriots Founder Jenny Beth Martin says it’s the Democrats who took an extreme position with their filibuster.

“When it comes to Supreme Court nominees, never in the history of our entire country have we had a partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.  It just hasn’t been done.  What the Democrats are doing right now is breaking the tradition and the practice that we’ve had in this country for over 200 years,” said Martin, whose group has been aligned with the Judicial Crisis Network in pushing for the confirmation of Gorsuch.

The Tea Party Patriots are best known for advocating smaller government and lower taxes, but Martin says the Supreme Court fight is very much in her organization’s interest.

“We understand it is critically important that if we want to have constitutionally-limited government, then we have to have a Supreme Court that upholds the law and judges laws based on the Constitution,” said Martin.

She is convinced the Democrats don’t really have a case against Gorsuch but are still bitter over 2016.

“They are just frustrated that it’s not their person, that they lost the election in November, that it is President Trump who won the election and therefore won the ability to nominate Judge Gorsuch and they are doing all they can to resist what President Trump was elected to do,” said Martin.

Martin says the public is engaged on this issue and overwhelmingly in support of Gorsuch, but she says Democrats aren’t listening to all of their constituents.

“Democrat senators are listening to their base.  They’re not listening to the whole of the American people, but they are listening to their base.  So they are doing what they think their base wants them to do,” said Martin.

She believes the effort to filibuster Gorsuch will backfire on red state Democrats like Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., in 2018.

“She has said that this would be a very political maneuver if they filibustered Gorsuch.  That’s what she’s doing and she’s doing it out of pure politics, not out of what’s best for the country,” said Martin.

“I know that it is a political job and the things the elected officials do they are going to look at things through the prism of politics.  Sometimes you need to do what’s best for the country because you have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution for your country,” said Martin.

And Martin is firmly convinced fidelity to the Constitution will be a hallmark of Gorsuch’s time on the Supreme Court.

“He looks at the law and he respects the law as it’s written.  He doesn’t intend to make law and create law out of whole cloth from the bench with his decisions, and he is going to look at the law through the prism of the Constitution,” said Martin.

With the filibuster nuked, a final Senate vote on Gorsuch is expected Friday evening.

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Filed Under: News & Politics, Podcasts Tagged With: Court, democrats, filibuster, Garland, Gorsuch, news, nuclear, option, Supreme

‘They Know It’s in Trouble’

October 4, 2016 by GregC

http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/10-4-turner-blog.mp3

Health care expert Grace-Marie Turner says Bill Clinton’s public criticism of Obamacare and obvious infighting within Obama’s own administration proves the U.S. health care system is in big trouble on its current course.

The former president made headlines Monday, when he discussed the big problems created by President Obama’s signature domestic legislation.

“The people that are getting killed on this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies.  Why?  Because they’re not organized.  They don’t have any bargaining power with insurance companies.  They’re getting whacked,” said Clinton.

“So you’ve got this crazy system where suddenly 25 million more people have health care and the people busting it sometimes 60 hours a week wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.  It’s the craziest thing in the world,” said Clinton.

Turner, who actively fought Clinton’s health care reform in the 1990s and the push for Obamacare says, Clinton is on the right track – but only to a point.

“He’s got the diagnosis right.  People are very unhappy with this law.  The longer it’s in place, the more unhappy they are.  He’s clearly hearing from small businesses.  He’s hearing from families who cannot afford their premiums,” said Turner.

However, Turner suspects Clinton’s solution to the problem will only create more problems.

“What he’s doing I fear is teeing up, if Hillary is elected president, even more government control over the health sector.  The American people know the problem is too much government control over health care,” said Turner.

She also says his characterization of what those millions of new people with health care coverage are receiving is badly misleading.

“He’s saying people have health care.  No, they have health insurance.  Ask people how hard it is to find a doctor to see them.  People on Medicaid still have to go to hospital emergency rooms, particularly if they need specialty care,” said Turner.

Turner says the reasons for Obamacare’s failures are obvious.

“The health insurance companies are absolutely in straitjackets.  The American people are being told the kind of health insurance they must buy, soup to nuts and absolutely everything anybody could think of, instead of actually having a policy that may work for them and their families that they may be able to afford.  That’s not a choice they have right now,” said said Turner.

She fears a Hillary Clinton presidency would look to add a public option or some other way to increase government control of the health care system.  Bill Clinton hinted similarly by suggesting those not qualifying for subsidies should be able to buy in to Medicare or Medicaid at a cost that’s comfortable for them, even if they don’t qualify for them.

Turner says that’s a recipe for disaster.  She says the average senior citizen couple pays about $160,000 into the Medicare system but ends up needing more than $400,000 in care.  She says the math of stuffing more people into that system should be clear to everyone.

“The system is not sustainable.  It will go broke.  It will go broke even faster if you put more people on it,” said Turner.

The Obama administration is also reportedly split on what do about insurance companies dropping out of the exchanges and demanding reimbursement in the billions of dollars.  Some in the administration are apparently trying to work around existing law that forbids insurance company bailouts to keep the system alive.

At the same, the Justice Department is also fighting back against court challenges from insurance companies to pay them overdue subsidies.

Turner says this contradiction shows a fierce debate playing out within the administration.

“You have a big disagreement between the political people who want to do everything they can to rescue Obamacare and the civil servants who understand that these payments are illegal.  Congress has passed very specific legislation forbidding any more corporate welfare,” said Turner.

Turner says this public infighting, plus the Clinton comments prove this administration understands the perilous state of our health care system.

“They know it’s in trouble.  We have been talking since the beginning, since before this law passed, about the problems with this law.  It was totally predictable that this was going to happen.  Finally the supporters are saying it has problems.  I think it is a whole other level when former President Bill Clinton basically says the law is a mess and a crazy scheme,” said Turner.

She says it will be difficult to fix the law because the Democrats are only interested in spending more money in a bad direction and Republicans want nothing to do with that.  Turner says real negotiation will have to take place since Republicans will have to be part of the discussions, unlike 2010 when the law passed with support only from Democrats.

But Turner isn’t interested in tinkering with what she sees as a failure.  She wants to return to healthy competition in the health care sector.

“Give consumers choices.  They’re happy with the product.  They’re engaged in helping to make sure that they spend their health care dollars wisely.  And they see the savings when they make smart decisions,” said Turner.

“That’s what we need more of, not more government spending and government control, thinking that somehow we’re going to be able to spend enoughto that everybody can have all the health care they want all the time without any strings attached.  That’s not possible,” said Turner.

 

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Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: choice, Clinton, exchanges, government, insurance, medicare, news, Obamacare, option, public

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