- Jun 6, 2007
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If the American people are to see an improvement in the healthcare problems for America they need to see the following. They need to see moderate or centrist's Republicans get together and agree amongst themselves to negoitiate. They need to see if the Democrats will seriously negotiate a deal on "some" of Americans health care problems. Before they agree to sit down and negotiate with the Democrats on this issue they need to have some general outline agreement with the Democrats or it is waste of everyones time and hope. First, Democrats have to agree to take off the table this high priced, government takeover of the healthcare system type of bill that has been in play. The Whitehouse recently said that the President intends to pass reform legislation similar to the ones that passed the Senate and House. If this is the Democrats position they are not serious about negotiating a bill and Republicans shouldn't waste time with them on the matter. Moderate Republicans position should be we don't negotiate unless Obama, Pelosi and Reid publicly agree that the goal of the negotiations is a dramatically scaled back version of the Senate/House bill. They would need to agree to the outer perimeters for the bill, including that the total cost for the bill would be no greater than $600 billion over ten years and that is the first ten years of benefits and benefits must start within two years of the beginning of collection of fees or taxes mandated by the bill. They would have to agree to no takeover by the government of the healthcare system by this it is meant only "no public option" and "no big exchange bureaucracy(s)". They would need to further agree that only twenty percent of Medicare cuts in the bill can be used to pay non-Medicare spending in the bill - Medicare expenses are too unpredictable and it is too politically unpalatable to have cuts in seniors programs paying for non-senior benefit programs. They would need to agree that all medicare spending in the bill would be considered spending that needs to be offset in the bill by either cuts or revenue raising. Of course they and the Republicans would need to agree that all spending in the bill would be paid for by cuts and/or revenue raising in the bill.
The Republicans in the negotiating group would have to agree to in the bill have the Federal government financially help low and middle income workers without employer sponsored health insurance buy health insurance. Republicans would have to agree to raise money to pay for the bill and it won't be by repealing the tax provision which allows workers to exclude as income the premium a worker's employer pays for the workers health insurance unless it is for a wealthy worker and employers wouldn't lose the tax deduction for this premium costs except to the extent the premium is for a cadillac insurance plan or to the extent the insurance is for wealthy workers. Further, Republicans would have to agree to not pursue punitive damage caps in medical malpractice lawsuits in this bill - for people devastatingly hurt through medical negligence Congress shouldn't be reducing their rights as part of a comprehensive health care reform bill - that issue should be in a separate bill, a $500,000 cap is a travesty of justice for some of these victims, the American people deserve to hear better solutions on this issue than the present simple ones presently offered.
Moderate Republicans should go to the Democrat leadership and once the above terms are met agree to participate in a conference committee on the bill under the additional following terms. At least two moderate senate Republicans sit on the committee (three would be preferred -considering sixty senate votes are needed to pass the legislation) and at least two moderate house Republicans sit on the committee. One moderate Democrat runs the committee, that means he or she is God on all committee matters. That moderate Democrat chairman has to be approved by all four Republicans on the committee. This chairmen has veto power on the number of Democrat seats on the committee that make up greater than 50% of the seats (this figure constitutes the chairperson's and all Republican seats). Since this conference committee isn't an academic exercise that is one wants to see the conference committee final bill passed into law, the Democrat leadership will have to collect the needed number of votes to pass the bill. And because the conference committee will be heavily weighted with centrists like the american people the conference committee will likely produce a bill that may need to be altered to gain non-centrists votes to be passed into law. So what the conference committee needs to do is pass a tentative final bill which will then be turned over to the the Democrat leadership which will collect the needed number of votes for passage and amend it as needed and than deliver it back to the conference committee for final passage - final passage should not be hard because the Democrat leadership will control slightly less than fifty percent of the seats on the conference committee and if they can't persuade at least a couple or few of the centrists to vote their way the American people will likely be rejecting the bill so it won't really matter. With respect to passage of the tentative final bill out of the conference committee at least one of the Republicans will have to vote in favor of the bill, this condition does not apply to passage of the final bill once the Democrat leadership has returned it to the committee.
The American people are a centrist people especially now. They hear about 9.7% unemployment rates, the stock market moves like an off-road vehicle riding sand dunes, America's home foreclosure crisis, economists of all stripes say the Fed must increase interest rates and reduce the money supply, the country's budget deficit as well as the national debt are at crisis stage. This environment has moved the American people to not want a big spending, big government health care bill. The American people want a very restrained bill they don't want the good in the health care system hurt they just want the government to do what they can to fix the problems in the system.
The Republicans in the negotiating group would have to agree to in the bill have the Federal government financially help low and middle income workers without employer sponsored health insurance buy health insurance. Republicans would have to agree to raise money to pay for the bill and it won't be by repealing the tax provision which allows workers to exclude as income the premium a worker's employer pays for the workers health insurance unless it is for a wealthy worker and employers wouldn't lose the tax deduction for this premium costs except to the extent the premium is for a cadillac insurance plan or to the extent the insurance is for wealthy workers. Further, Republicans would have to agree to not pursue punitive damage caps in medical malpractice lawsuits in this bill - for people devastatingly hurt through medical negligence Congress shouldn't be reducing their rights as part of a comprehensive health care reform bill - that issue should be in a separate bill, a $500,000 cap is a travesty of justice for some of these victims, the American people deserve to hear better solutions on this issue than the present simple ones presently offered.
Moderate Republicans should go to the Democrat leadership and once the above terms are met agree to participate in a conference committee on the bill under the additional following terms. At least two moderate senate Republicans sit on the committee (three would be preferred -considering sixty senate votes are needed to pass the legislation) and at least two moderate house Republicans sit on the committee. One moderate Democrat runs the committee, that means he or she is God on all committee matters. That moderate Democrat chairman has to be approved by all four Republicans on the committee. This chairmen has veto power on the number of Democrat seats on the committee that make up greater than 50% of the seats (this figure constitutes the chairperson's and all Republican seats). Since this conference committee isn't an academic exercise that is one wants to see the conference committee final bill passed into law, the Democrat leadership will have to collect the needed number of votes to pass the bill. And because the conference committee will be heavily weighted with centrists like the american people the conference committee will likely produce a bill that may need to be altered to gain non-centrists votes to be passed into law. So what the conference committee needs to do is pass a tentative final bill which will then be turned over to the the Democrat leadership which will collect the needed number of votes for passage and amend it as needed and than deliver it back to the conference committee for final passage - final passage should not be hard because the Democrat leadership will control slightly less than fifty percent of the seats on the conference committee and if they can't persuade at least a couple or few of the centrists to vote their way the American people will likely be rejecting the bill so it won't really matter. With respect to passage of the tentative final bill out of the conference committee at least one of the Republicans will have to vote in favor of the bill, this condition does not apply to passage of the final bill once the Democrat leadership has returned it to the committee.
The American people are a centrist people especially now. They hear about 9.7% unemployment rates, the stock market moves like an off-road vehicle riding sand dunes, America's home foreclosure crisis, economists of all stripes say the Fed must increase interest rates and reduce the money supply, the country's budget deficit as well as the national debt are at crisis stage. This environment has moved the American people to not want a big spending, big government health care bill. The American people want a very restrained bill they don't want the good in the health care system hurt they just want the government to do what they can to fix the problems in the system.
