There is a very annoying commercial for a product called "Head On" in which the announcer repeatedly says "Head on, apply directly to the forehead" about fifty times. That commercial explains how I feel about the annoying approach of the Republicans to the repeal of health reform. Their talking points are the same ones they have been proposing for decades -- selling insurance across state lines, malpractice reform, and individual responsibility (i.e. high deductibles). But these so-called "solutions" do very little to address the problems of the rising cost of health care in the U.S., the medical mistakes made every day in most of our hospitals, the fragmentation of service that causes patients to go from one doctor to another to get care, the lack of any coordination of care, and of course the increasing number of people who cannot afford health insurance and thus go "bare", hoping they can remain well enough to avoid a medical bill.
The neutral Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has said that the Republican bill (H.R.2) to repeal health reform would actually increase the deficit by $230 BILLION over the next ten years. Further, 32 million people would actually LOSE coverage under the Republican bill, in contrast to the number of people that will be covered by the current health reform law, the Affordable Care Act.
The Republican response to the CBO report? To disregard completely the credibility of the CBO, an institution that Republicans have supported when the CBO agreed with them.
As Ezra Klein pointed out in the Washington Post last week:
Beneath it (the Republican denial of the CBO's analysis) is something more insidious: an effort to discredit the last truly neutral, truly respected scorekeeper in Washington. The facts don't support the particular case the Republicans want to make, so they're trying to take down the people who supply the facts. But once that's done, it can't easily be undone. And the true loser will be the very thing Republicans claim to care most about: the deficit.
After all the noise about health care repeal, all the "head on apply directly to the forehead" repetitions, even after Republicans have acknowledged that their efforts are only symbolic and not likely to pass the Senate much less Obama's veto, what are we left with? Not much. Mainly rhetoric about health reform being "job-killing", something which various independent analysts have also disputed.
Do the Republicans have a solution to our health care problems? Not really. Last year, when the president invited Republicans to put forth their best ideas on health reform, they came up with the same old talking points (which I will avoid repeating again to save you the head on headache). Many of their candidates in 2010 repeated them, ad nauseam, hoping that repetition would crush any analysis by the public.
The Republicans may not have a comprehensive proposal that reduces the number of uninsured and improves the health care we have, but they do have a series of proposals to take apart the existing law piece by piece, and this is what we should all be looking at and fighting against. Kaiser Health News lists several of their ideas for dismantling the ACA, including reducing the tax on insurers that helps to fund the subsidies, removing the CLASS Act (the voluntary insurance program that funds some long term care), defunding the Independent Payment Advisory Board that is set up to control Medicare costs, eliminating the individual mandate, etc. If they are successful, then these actions will seriously undermine the integrity of the health reform law, and the repeal effort will transcend annoying and become genuinely frightening.
This week when the president speaks to the nation in his State of the Union speech, he will undoubtedly mention the benefits that have already accrued to many Americans because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. What he will not have time to mention are the many positive changes that are going on right now in health care in anticipation of full implementation of reform. What you will hear from the Republican spokesperson, Rep. Paul Ryan, if he mentions health care at all, is likely be the same old same old. After all, if they had any new ideas that could actually cut costs and improve quality, wouldn't we have heard about them already?
Apply all of this directly to your forehead, take an aspirin and call me in the morning!
Update: President Obama did, indeed mention the health care law, but very briefly. He pledged to uphold it but said he was open to "improvements". And it was the President who mentioned malpractice reform, not Rep. Ryan, who gave the Republican response. Ryan pledged to undo the Obama health reform but gave no specifics about how that might happen. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/paul-ryan-state-of-the-un_n_813985.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=012611&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily+Brief