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How The Republican Health Care Plan Died

John Boehner Presents his health care plan
John Boehner Presents his health care plan

I spent my Saturday evening listening to live coverage of floor debate in the House of Representatives.  The difference in philosophies is great and obvious.  The opposition view is a request to disavow the great experiment in freedom that this country was founded upon.

The Democrats disparaged the Republican plan because it did not cover “all Americans”.  It is not obvious to them that not everyone wants health insurance.  In fact,the Democrats intend to force everyone into health insurance just so they can say everyone is insured.  Unfortunately, their plan would also force young healthy Americans to spend upwards of $5,000 a year more than they would with no plan at all.

Several of the Democrat debaters compared the GOP plan to the Katrina clean-up.  Wasn’t Katrina a prime example of how people should depend on themselves and less on big-government?

One member of the Democrat party actually came out and spent his two minutes to defend frivolous and unlimited malpractice lawsuits.  While bashing Republicans for giving gifts to the insurance companies, they are comfortable in protecting the revenues of trial lawyers.

As the debate raged on, the left presented facts around how Pelosi-care would reduce the deficit by $109 Billion, but that is not the same as saving taxpayers any money at all.  In fact, hundreds of billions of dollars will have to be pried out of the hands of employees, employers, and Americans of all varieties to make sure that the bill appears to be deficit neutral.  When Medicare and Social Security were proposed and approved, those were deficit neutral as well.  Medicare will go broke soon and Social Security will be operating on a deficit next year.

Charles Rangel tried to make the case that Republicans only presented a proposal this last Tuesday.  What about H.R.3400 presented in July that the Democrat leadership successfully tabled at that time?  Now that they are presenting their bill for debate at precisely the same time as the Democrats, somehow the Republicans are later than the DNC to the table.  Who is the “party of no” now?

A large portion of the liberal caucus did nothing more than bash the GOP, calling them the party of, “Grandstanding, opposition, and pretending”.  Nothing in the Democrat bill does anything to bring down costs and the CBO says agrees.  The CBO offers that the GOP bill would reduce premiums by up to 10%.  The same non-partisan CBO said that Pelosi-care would not necessarily decrease premiums at all.

What we have to realize is that the Democrats are not really interested in reducing premiums.  They are not interested in the cost of health care at all.  Their bill and the CBO assessment proves it.  They only want coverage for all, whether or not “all” want it.  This is about shoving a government mandate down our throats so that they can use it as an excuse to control our lives.  Anyone that has gone through the dismal process of  Medicare/Medicaid eligibility knows that the government can even control what you can or cannot leave to your heirs.  There is actually almost a billion dollars in the bill to legislate how parents should raise their children.  Are we really willing to have them take control of the rest of our lives?

More proof of the entanglement that the Democrats are willing us into came from John Boehner’s comments.  John Boehner spent his time to contradict the outright mistruths spoken by Democrats in this session by reading their own bill back to them. He establishes that employers will find the taxes cheaper than providing insurance and will therefor leave people on their own… but these people are citizens that were previously providing for themselves.  Now they will have no choice but to become taxpayer-subsidized entities.  Tack on the regulatory costs that employers and insurers will have to go through as all new plans have to be approved by a regulatory body and a health czar – a leader of a special new administration that only the Executive branch has oversight upon.

Boehner makes a fundamental point in saying that it is impossible to add all of the new Bureaucracies, employees, czars and administrations without health care costing more.  Current insurance plans and providers don’t have any of these.  How will adding all of these new costly government agencies and positions possibly make it more efficient, less-costly, and higher-quality?  Mr. Boehner quotes the Democrat plan back to them and demonstrates the unbelievable amount of power that it will give to the new Health Care Commissioner (the health czar).

John Dingle Fights Republicans on GOP health care bill
John Dingle Fights Republicans on GOP health care bill

The closing comments by John Dingle, lead sponsor of Pelosi-care relied on an article by the New York Times to counter Boehner’s quotation of Dingle’s bill.  Dingle muddled on making the sum of my greater points that his bill is about forcing everyone into insurance, not about reducing costs.  He ended his remarks saying that his bill would not put the government between a doctor and patient, but instead between the insurance company and the doctor and patient.

Several of the late opposition members that spoke said that Republicans would leave Americans, “on your own”.  What the elitist majority in Congress fail to realize is that 80%+ of us would prefer it that way.

*The Stupak amendment passed 240 to 194 with 64 dems supporting one Republican voting “Present”.  Our money will not be used to fund abortions.

*The GOP health care bill was shot down in a party-line vote:  176 for, 258 against, with one Republican against.

  • Joseph Cao (R-LA) was the single Republican that voted for H.R. 3962 (Pelosi-care)
  • Tim Johnon (R-IL) was the only Republican that voted against the Republican Health Plan
  • John Shadegg (R-AZ) voted “present” on abortion bill – taking his leadership from Senator.. oops President Obama it would seem.

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Rich Mitchell

Rich Mitchell is the editor-in-chief of Conservative Daily News and the president of Bald Eagle Media, LLC. His posts may contain opinions that are his own and are not necessarily shared by Bald Eagle Media, CDN, staff or .. much of anyone else. Find him on twitter, facebook and

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