GOP Senators Say Dems Ignoring Republican Health Care Ideas

By Courtney Ann Jackson-Talk Radio News Service

Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said Wednesday that Republicans want the nation's healthcare system revamped this year, and they’re proposing several ideas as to how to achieve this goal. The proposals all address what Alexander called the two biggest problems with the Democrats' plan; Too much debt, and a “Washington take-over.”

“The Republican caucus has a whole handful of lollipops [ideas about healthcare reform] and we keep offering them to the Democrats saying, you know, here’s the red one, here’s the blue one, here’s the green one,” said Alexander. “Why don’t you [the Democrats] take one and let’s go to work on it?”

Alexander noted that there are many alternative bills that have much in common but Democrats must take more Republican proposals into consideration in order to create a bipartisan bill. The Senators mentioned that despite the absence of formal agreements, they are in agreement with the President and the Democrats on many points within the debate. Specifically, the Republicans said they support preventing the loss of healthcare insurance for American people, not allowing for massive amounts of debt to run up and allowing Americans to keep their existing healthcare coverage if they are satisfied with it.

Gregg said he does not think the healthcare bill will be passed in the Senate before the August recess. When asked for his reasoning, he said Finance won’t complete its mark-up in time. He also said the health bill is being rewritten on a weekly basis, but the one consistency is that it is “extremely expensive and it’s not paid for.”

In terms of Medicaid expansion, Alexander said, “the debt is running up in Washington. So to lower that debt a little bit, they’re shifting it onto other people and the new version shifts it on first to employers across the country who are struggling to create new jobs, and second it shifts it in a big way to states through the Medicaid program.”

He highlighted the idea of “dumping low-income people into the Medicaid program” and pointed out that it is going to cost the states “huge amounts of money” in new tax increases.

The Senators said that above all else, Republicans want healthcare plans that average Americans can afford.

Health Care: Getting Over The Errors Of The Past

By Michael Combier-Talk Radio News Service

The United States cannot endure another failure on health care reform like it did in 1993 and 2003 said journalists attending today’s Congressional Health Care Caucus. Bipartisan support exists in Congress to pass legislation, but citizens and the press need to be better informed of what the reform involves.

The healthcare debate is very important "because it is going to affect the lives of every American living today and coming in the next twenty, thirty, or forty decades," said U.S. Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-TX) who was hosting the event.

National Public Radio’s Julie Rovner called herself "a veteran of the last go-round of health reform in 1993-1994" who is currently "hearing an awful lot of the same rhetoric coming from many of the same mouths."

Since the healthcare reform failure of 1993-1994 "a massive consensus has developed, almost completely bipartisan...on the need for health care reform," said Roll Call’s Mort Kondrake. This consensus is being reached due to what Americans are paying for health care coverage today. Currently, 16 percent of the nation's GDP is spent on health care by state and local governments.

Rovner urged Congress to take its time transforming the nation’s health care system. "People really don't understand, it doesn't give reporters enough time to really figure it out and then explain it back to the public...This debate maybe needs a little bit more time to play out."

Healthcare Experts: Insurance Competition Healthy

By Aaron Richardson-Talk Radio News Service

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Joseph Levitt, former Secretary U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, spoke to reporters today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Both answered questions from the press on why they thought U.S. healthcare reform is needed and purposed strategies on how to make it a reality. “(The U.S. has) not succeeded in the past in part because we (Congress) has failed to come together and reach the common ground to do something,” Daschle said.

With the November election of Barak Obama as U.S. President and so many Americans unable to access healthcare there is a new diligence to come to some type of agreement on how to alleviate the problem. Insurance companies are the greatest critics of making universal healthcare a reality, both men said. “Are we designing this system for the insurance companies or are we designing it for the American people?” said Levitt.

Can The Eagle Learn From The Little Dragon?

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News

Taiwan, a free-market, capitalist democracy like the U.S. and Britain, developed a national health plan 14 years ago that now covers 99 percent of the people in the country, citizens or not, and enjoys 70-80 percent approval ratings, according to Michael S. Chen, Ph.D., Vice President and CFO of the Bureau of National Health Insurance, here to share that experience with America.

As journalist T.R. Reid reported on Frontline in “Sick Around the World,” Taiwan was the last industrialized nation to adopt universal health care. Except us. As latecomers, they had plenty of precedent to consider. For several years, the Taiwanese government sent representatives to examine most of the world’s existing systems, then worked to consolidate best practices into a form appropriate to their own culture and economy. Dr. Chen was here to report on their system and results as the Obama administration tackles the myriad problems involved in reforming American healthcare.

“Cost is about 100 U.S. dollars, or about two percent of their income for an average family of four," Chen said. The service is mostly paid for by mandated premiums, with about 10 percent paid for by the individual, 60 percent by the employer, and the remaining 30 percent by the government. They achieve near 100 percent enrollment by sending agents out to enroll people who do not comply. Subsidies are available to ensure affordability. Union workers do not get an employer contribution, but pay 60 percent, with the remaining forty percent again from the government, according to Chen.

Any medically justifiable expense is covered, and patients may go to any doctor they choose, though doctors in high demand may have waiting lists. The system itself does not have any backup at all, he said. When individuals are flagged as having an unusually high rate of utilization, their care is examined, and their eligibility may become limited to “just two or three clinics,” Chen said.

Total spending on the National Health Service is about six percent of GDP, which is less than the budgeted seven-to-eight percent.

Publicly, doctors have complained about compensation. “Privately they like it," Chen says, "because they are guaranteed four to five percent rate increases per year. What other occupation can say that?”

As was the case for Taiwan, America would not have to re-invent the wheel, “There are so many wheels already,” Chen said, referring to the many existing systems and long experience in other industrialized democracies.

When the 20 to 30 percent of Taiwanese who disapprove do so, he said, “It’s usually because they think $100 a month is too much money. I tell them to visit America.”

Unemployment high in March, Officials say

By Michael Ruhl, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service

A day after President Barack Obama's budget was passed by a Congress boiling with partisanship, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing unemployment at its highest since 1983. There are now 13.2 million Americans out of work.

The pouring rain in Washington mirrored the sobered mood in the room, as the Joint Economic Committee heard the testimony of Keith Hall, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

March was one of the worst Months on record for unemployment, and when asked outright, Hall told the committee that there were no "bright spots" in the report.

National unemployment climbed to 8.5 percent in March, rising from the level of 8.1 percent in February and 7.6 percent in January.

Hall said that two-thirds of the job loss has happened in the past 5 months. Every state is in recession for the first time in 30 years, according to Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).

Official unemployment numbers do not encompass underemployed Americans or those who have officially left the workforce. It is reported that 16 percent of the country is out of work or underemployed. One in four of those unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, and of those, half have been looking for work for over a year, Hall said.

Maloney highlighted that last month, 8,000 jobs were lost in the news publishing industry. Those losses total 70,000 job cuts since Dec. 2007, Hall said, adding that most job losses have been see in the manufacturing, construction, and temporary services industries. The only area to see any growth in March was the Healthcare industry, Hall said.

Ranking Committee member Senator Sam Brownback (R-KA) noted that the impact of the ongoing recession was not severe for almost a year after it began in December 2007. Brownback attributed recent dramatic jumps in job losses over the past five months to the lockup in the credit markets and the government bailouts that followed.

The Federal Reserve believes that unemployment will peak at 8.8 percent this year, but Ranking House Committee Member Kevin Brady (R-TX) said that the unemployment rate is already higher than what the administration anticipated for 2009. Brady said that the Obama Administration's "optimistic assumptions" would not get the country out of its current mess.

President Obama’s Economic Stimulus package was passed by Congress earlier this year, and saw an unprecedented amount of money placed into public works meant to put people back to work. Obama has pledged the legislation will save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years.

Read the report here: Bureau of Labor Statistics Report