The Church Report

Mired in Healthcare Muck, the President Suddenly Pleads for Help

Monday, February 15, 2010

Jonathan Imbody

By Jonathan Imbody

Mr. Obama used the Super Bowl pregame show to tell CBS News that finally--after a year of failing to jam his partisan healthcare plan down the throats of Congress and the American public—he's ready "to look at the Republican ideas that are out there."

Not that GOP plans have been hidden from sight, like the White House healthcare negotiations have been. Mr. Obama could have simply whipped out his Blackberry, Googled "Republican health care plan" and surfed through 17 million links.

"And I want to be very specific," Mr. Obama earnestly continues in the CBS interview, apparently on the verge of revealing the cryptic healthcare conundrums that have stymied him and his staff up until now.

"How do you guys want to lower costs?"

Oh.

That might have been a good question for the President and his party to start with a year ago, before crafting a radical and now-rejected plan to have their government take over our health care.

Since this binge-spending administration and Congress apparently need a primer on how to lower costs, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH 8th) on November 3, 2009 offered an instructive bill (offered as a substituting amendment to Democrat bill H.R. 3962). The Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Boehner bill found that it would reduce health care premiums and cut the deficit by $68 billion over ten years. Here's how:

·       Instead of paving the way for socialistic medicine and creating over a hundred new government agencies and bureaucracies, Boehner's plan encourages premium-reducing competition by allowing people to purchase health insurance policies across state lines.

·       Rather than protecting the lawyers' lobby, the Boehner bill institutes medical malpractice reforms to trim runaway lawsuit expenses, cut the cost of defensive medicine and keep good physicians from getting wrongfully sued out of medicine.

·       Instead of subsidizing abortions with taxpayer dollars and mandating abortion coverage in every region of the country, Boehner's alternative bill would prohibit all federal funds from being used to pay for abortions.

·       Rather than increasing premiums for everyone by forcing insurers to abandon policies based on actuarial risk, the Boehner plan provides federal funding for states to create high-risk pools, which provide group insurance options for patients otherwise unable to get coverage.

Another potentially significant cost factor in health care involves conscience rights for healthcare professionals. Too many healthcare professionals lose their jobs, promotions and privileges simply because they resist pressure and coercion to violate ethical codes on abortion and other controversial issues. Such discrimination against faith-based and other conscience-driven professionals threatens to knock thousands of physicians and nurses right out of medicine, creating a monumental healthcare access and cost crisis.

The "Empowering Patients First Act (HR 3400) introduced by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga. 6th) addresses this scandalous reality. The bill provides appropriately broad conscientious protection "to accommodate the conscientious objection of a purchaser or an individual or institutional health care provider when a procedure is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of such purchaser or provider."

None of these sensible proposals, however, made it into the "my way or the highway" bill that the President figured he could ram through a Congress controlled by his own party, without any bipartisan input. Rather than reaching across the aisle for advice, the President and Congressional leaders focused on cutting deals behind closed doors with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry … with campaign-funding union bosses … with the marginalized American Medical Association … and with holdout Senators Mary "Louisiana Purchase" Landrieu and Nebraska's Ben "Cornhusker Kickback" Nelson.

Sinking in the quicksand of rejected radical policies and a partisan and secretive approach to healthcare reform, President Obama now is belatedly, desperately reaching a hand out to Republicans to save him from the mire of his own making.

If Republicans accept that hand without reservation, the President will pull them down with him into the quicksand of the sinking bill that the American people have rejected.

Instead, Republicans should counsel the President to first let go of the radical approach that is weighing him down, and then offer him a rope tied to truly cost-cutting, conscience-honoring, patient-protecting proposals.

Jonathan Imbody serves as Vice President for Government Relations for the Christian Medical Association, the largest faith-based association of physicians. As director of the CMA Washington Office and liaison with the federal government, he has participated in nearly 30 meetings at the White House and makes over 250 personal contacts with Congressional leaders and government officials each year. A veteran writer of over 30 years, Jonathan has had nearly 100 commentaries published in the Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times and many other national publications. He and his wife Amy have four grown children and attend The Falls Church in Falls Church, VA.

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