President Obama’s health care law — already embroiled in fights on Capitol Hill and in federal courts across the country — picked up a new challenge Monday when 21 Republican governors sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius outlining how they believe the law will cripple their states.
The group proposed six changes to make the law more workable. In the letter, the group says the new health care system, “is seriously flawed, favors dependency over personal responsibility, and will ultimately destroy the private insurance market.” The governors are asking for unfettered flexibility in crafting state insurance exchanges, and for waivers from the law’s “costly mandates.”
Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who many predict will make a run for the White House in 2012, went a step further. He authored a piece in the Wall Street Journal in Monday that says, in reference to the new law, “all claims made for it were false.”
Daniels stands by the piece and says independent experts have verified the governors’ worst fears about what implementation of the law will mean.
“It was advertised as reducing the debt, and it’s going to add to it in a dramatic way,” Daniels claims. “It was advertised as reducing health care costs, but now everyone accepts it will run them upward.”
In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday, President Obama said he is open to ideas that could “improve the law.” The comment follows a Sunday interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, in which the president indicated he is willing to consider Republicans’ ideas on the topic.
But the president warned, “I’m not prepared to go back to a day when the American people — if you have got a pre-existing condition, if you had a heart attack then you can’t get help.”
As the governors await a response from the administration, they are gearing up to move ahead either way. In the letter they asked Sebelius to endorse their suggestions, but they noted, “If you do not agree, we will move forward with our own efforts regardless and HHS should be making plans to run exchanges under its own auspices.”
Daniels hopes the administration will truly consider the ideas laid out in the governors’ letter. He says the economic impact on states forced to implement the changes mandated by the health care law could be devastating, and may wind up costing millions of Americans their health care coverage. “We governors have to live in the real world,” Daniels said. “Only in Washington can you bet on a miracle.”
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7 Responses
The Fox article did not say what the criticisms are. Fortunately, the entire letter is available at the Republican Governor’s Association web site. Here are the six specific suggestions:
(1) Provide states with complete flexibility on operating the exchange, most importantly the freedom to decide which licensed insurers are permitted to offer their products
(2) Waive the bill’s costly mandates and grant states the authority to choose benefit rules that meet the specific needs of their citizens.
(3) Waive the provisions that discriminate against consumer-driven health plans, such as health savings accounts (HSA’s)
(4) Provide blanket discretion to individual states if they chose to move non-disabled Medicaid beneficiaries into the exchanges for their insurance coverage without the need of further HHS approval.
(5) Deliver a comprehensive plan for verifying incomes and subsidy amounts for exchange participants that is not an unfunded mandate but rather fully funded by the federal government and is certified as workable by an independent auditor.
(6) Commission a new and objective assessment of how many people will end up in the exchanges and on Medicaid in every state as a result of the legislation (including those “offloaded” by employers), and at what potential cost to state governments. The study must be conducted by a neutral third-party research organization agreed to by the states represented in this letter.
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AFAIK this is the first time that any prominent Republicans have actually come up with any constructive criticism on healthcare reform. Kudos to the Governors!
My comments on the specific proposals:
(1) This actually makes some sense; States have always maintained the power to determine which insurers can be licensed to do business in their states and to regulate their activity. The problem is that while most take this responsibility very seriously, some do not, so there probably needs to be at least some federal oversight.
(2) This has also been primarily a state responsibility; some states such as New York have legislated many such mandated coverages which do add tremendously to the cost of health care. (One of the most notable examples is that in New York, Assisted Reproductive Technology is a mandated coverage; this was done at the behest of the frum community.) This could again likely work with some minimal federal oversight.
(3) Health Savings Accounts are NOT a substitute for insurance even though they are proposed as such. However, they could enable people to purchase plans with higher deductables and co-pays.
(4) This could also work well as long as the states pick up the cost of the exchange plans. Most people on Medicaid are there because they can’t afford insurance at any price.
(5) This has the potential for eliminating some fraud, but it could also get very intrusive, for example for small businesses on the margin.
(6) The CBO actually did this and it is the agency in Washington that has the last word on matters such as this. The problem with the CBO is that it often tells people things they don’t want to hear.
Now if we can just get the Republicans in Congress to be constructive….
One more comment regarding (6): There is nothing to prevent the Republican governors from commissioning their own assessment.
Charlie,
There you go spouting you daily kook spoin again. I will remind you that the Conservatives DID have legitimate proposals however Reid, Pelosi, and Obama weren’t interested in any of them. When the president held his healthcare show, he, K’darko B’chol, decided to turn it into a campaign style republican slapping show and nothing else.
Charlie enough with you radical left wing rubbish. Say good bye to obamaCare. The courts with throw it out. And republicans will repeal it with a new president in 2012. Your liberal ideas are shattering before your very eyes americans have rejected this nonsense, wake up!
Charliehall, you are incorrect in saying (4) that “most
people are on medicaid because they can’t afford insurance at any price.”
Many are on medicaid because they can’t afford care that is not covered by their insurance such as home health aides,
nursing facilities, non-covered medications (donut hole).
” I will remind you that the Conservatives DID have legitimate proposals ”
Not proposals, proposal (singular): There was ONE serious legitimate Republican proposal, by Utah Sen. Robert Bennett who worked with Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden. It was similar to the proposal of Republican Sens. Bob Dole and John Chafee in 1994. It would have replaced the current system of employer-based insurance with an individual mandate. In many ways it was better than what passed.
What happened was that Republican right wingers could not handle the apostasy of being constructive. Mark Levin himself endorsed Bennett’s primary apponent, who won. It is disingenuous to claim that there was a conservative alternative when you’ve personally opposed it!
this article is a lie.
the health care reform act decreases the growth rate of health care per person the in the country and is deficit neutral according to every republican in the bipartisan CBO.
Repealing it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars as was proven in the media over the last few weeks.
leave it to fox to quote but not point out the flase statement from a republican governor the false claim that “the economic impact on states forced to implement the changes mandated by the health care law …may wind up costing millions of Americans their health care coverage.”
that is just the latest example of fox presenting material that leads Americans to think the opposite of the truth