Today I asked Sec. Geithner how creating a new health care entitlement program will bring down the deficit. You can view the video by clicking here .
Responses to “Video of Sec. Geithner Hearing”
Join the Conversation!
Recent News
- A Vote For America’s Energy Future
- Culberson Applauds Border Security Measures and Increased Oversight in the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill
- Rep. Culberson’s Statement on the FY 2014 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Bill
- Obama’s Abuses of Power
- Culberson Calls for Answers After Reports of HHS Soliciting Donations from Companies it Regulates
- Why Today’s Vote to Repeal Obamacare is Important
Newsletter Sign-up
YouTube
Qik
Flickr
Connect via:
Thank you for trying to break through the Geithner stonewall on the Obama healthcare takeover. What Republicans need to hammer home to the American people and the media is that we do NOT have a “healthcare crisis,” we have a problem with “insurance premiums.” Nobody in this country goes without life-saving medical care, even if they are indigent. Republicans need to reorient the language of the discussion to reflect the FACTS if the lie is ever to be put to the socialist rhetoric being spewed by this Administration. If Democrats are allowed to continue to define the terms of the debate, the American people – and the Republic itself – will be the ultimate losers.
Secretary Geithner’s fall back position was that the CBO scoring showed reduced government expenditures on healthcare. My immediate reaction was how does that claim compare with the CBO analysis of the House bill that was sent to the Senate? Has there been a CBO analysis of just the Senate bill that is being ramrodded through the House? If my recollection is correct, the CBO scoring of the bill that the House sent to the Senate is that expenditures would increase in the first years of implementation when compared to current expenditures.
Leaving aside the question of four years of increased taxation before the program kicks in, which you correctly brought up, Geithner said that expenditures are the key to reducing the federal budget deficit. The common sense that most Americans operate under tells us that if more people are brought into the system, the only way that expenditures can be reduced is by drastically cutting coverage, not only for the aging baby-boomers that will flood the medical system in the next score of years, but for everyone in the system. This clearly would provide Americans with LESS care, not more, even if it is “free.”
You mentioned that your prospective solutions would include purchasing insurance across state lines, tort reform limiting frivolous lawsuits and enabling businesses to pool together to purchase lower-cost insurance for their employees. Tort reform is necessary, but cannot be properly done by Congress under the Constitution. Texas has had success in this area because it is a state issue, and any attempt by Congress to legislate in this are would further expand the federal government. Congress could allow insurance companies to sell across state lines and pass tax laws that would allow companies to form purchasing co-ops, but why stop there? Congress could also allow Americans to purchase prescription drugs across national borders, which would have a substantial impact on the medical costs of Americans. Companies under license from the American pharmaceutical company that developed them manufacture many such drugs, for example, for the Canadian market. Requiring a warning label that these drugs are “Not Approved by the FDA” should be all that’s necessary. Free market principles hold that an informed consumer is best able to make beneficial choices for himself, and it is through the availability of competitive choice that the best quality products can be purchased by the most consumers at the lowest price.
The ultimate cost control is when the consumer of a service also pays for it. Congress should make HSA plans available to ALL individuals, not just the self-employed, and get out of the business of controlling the content of those plans. Mandated coverages – such as males being covered for mammograms as my carrier informed me that I now was in January of 2008 – increase costs and reduce competition. Americans need to be able to purchase health insurance “cafeteria-style” again, as they could before the Congress created HMO’s in the 1970’s and gave them preferred legal status.
If the primary purchaser of health insurance was the individual rather than the company they work for, pre-existing conditions would not be the problem they are now. Portability across state lines and individual HSA’s would drastically reduce the number of people caught in this situation. For the rest, and for people in transition between employer-paid coverage and self-purchased insurance, Congress should require the formation of a pool for high-risk insureds, similar to that in place in many states for automobile insurance, as a trade-off for allowing insurance companies to market policies across state lines.
Every time a socialist claims there are “35 million uninsured Americans” as a justification for the takeover of the medical care delivery system in this country, a Republican needs to stand up and say “the real number is more like 15 million, and 35% of those are the youngest adults who choose not to buy coverage, even though they could.” Just as Democrats cannot be allowed to control the terms of the debate, they cannot be allowed to make up hyperbolic statistics. Consider that if “cafeteria-style” plans were available today, many of those “uninsured” 20-somethings would buy insurance.
I hope I’ve given you some food for thought. Keep up the fight for fiscal responsibility and smaller government!
John,
When will it end???
Joe the Precinct Chairman
God bless John Culberson. You say it like it is. It seems these days that if a Democrat is moving its lips, it’s lying. We have to get these lying liberals out of our government. We don’t have money to waste. I understand the health care reform is the prelude to amnesty for all the illegals. If we cannot afford the proposed reform for legal Americans, how can we afford it for the millions of illegals. John, keep up the pressure and hang in there! You need to be cloned and all your clones get elected. How can each conservative citizen help you and help our country?