I don’t think this will ever reach the Morning Joe level of idiot box market saturation, but I do see more and more commentators mentioning the fact that the Republicans have not come up with their own alternative health care reform bill. This makes me wonder: why can’t Republicans have Greg Mankiw and Marty Feldstein write up some whackadoodle free-markety health care proposal? Mike Leavitt could pitch it to David Broder and Fred Hiatt. Megan McArdle could write 10,000 words about the genius of it and Andrew Sullivan would nod along. Serious people would agree that it merited serious consideration.
Why didn’t they do this?
I hesitate to add DougJ +7 because I think this post is fairly lucid.
Update. Apparently, they do have some kind of actual bill, HR 3400. But they never talk about it. Why not a bill that Joe Scarborough could get behind, at least?
cleek
here’s one: Patients Choice Act. it’s been out since May.
ominira
Because America has the bestest healthcare system in the world and so the status quo is fine. It ain’t broken, they don’t need to fix it. Or something else Bill Kristol told them.
Kirk Spencer
Actually, they have. HR3400.
It stinks so bad even they won’t push it. But there is a Republican health care reform bill on the table.
Legalize
The nutjob base wants nothing. No reform. Nothing.
Demo Woman
Most countries do not have free market health care because it’s not efficient. They could write up their plan to include HSA which is regressive, they could even add on tax cuts and then could see how much it costs. As we know Repubs don’t like to pay for their plans.
It’s an interesting idea though!
The Grand Panjandrum
It would then require them to admit they want to get rid of Medicare/Medicaid, or they would have to explain why those two single payer programs and NOT one for other people. They are more and more being sucked into that argument and they DO NOT want to be on the record as being against those two programs. Bernie Sanders could win a Texas Senate seat if his opponent was against Medicare.
Demo Woman
@Kirk Spencer: What’s the bill include. Was I right? I bet they don’t even have a cost figure.
freelancer
Semi-OT:
Regarding Sully, WTF has he done to the Dish in his absence. For a guy who, more than anyone else in the world excoriated McCain for picking Palin as his #2 and heir to the office in his absence, the guy has chose some self-described “tepid” fucktards to back him up.
Shorter <a href=”@ Conor Clarke from yesterday:
alien radio
OT/
This CIA Blackwater assassination squad thing, what are the odds that it is directly tied to cheney’s secret cia death squads thing? does this mean Cheney’s secret assassination task force project was a blackwater contract funded though the CIA?
mrmobi
Coincidentally, yesterday I was driving behind a car with a bumper sticker which had the entire Republican Health Care Plan on it.
Republican Health Care Plan = Don’t Get Sick
Carl Nyberg
The Austrian School guys have a few insane ideas, like eliminating licenses for medical professionals.
The idea is that when you get sick you do a bunch of research on doctors and then go with the best doctor who is available in your price range.
This is supposed to use the market to ensure quality and keep down cost.
Part of the way it’s supposed to control costs is that there won’t be an artificial shortage of physicians.
If this was one of your big ideas for making health care better, you’d probably stick to attacking the other plan too.
alien radio
OT/
This CIA Blackwater assassination squad thing, what are the odds that it is directly tied to cheney’s secret cia death squads thing? does this mean Cheney’s secret assassination task force project was a blackwater contract funded though the CIA?
NonyNony
This would actually be a problem for the Republicans, because they would be conceding that there is in fact a health care problem in this country and that the government can in fact do something about it. Concede on either of these two points and they either lose the debate or get eaten by the rabid piranhas they call their base. It’s a slippery slope argument, but GOPers won’t concede even an inch because they know what THEY would do if the Dems gave them an opening like that.
I think that’s why even though as you point out they have their own counter-proposal, they don’t want to talk about it. Anything that causes the screamers to think there’s not “one dime’s bit of difference” between the two parties is counter productive to their current target of clawing back a few seats in 2010.
freelancer
Blargh! I want my link button back.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/08/the-madness-of-antonin-scalia-ctd.html
@Cole:
WAHHHH! Bring on the fainting couches, I’ve got my pearls, ready to be clutched. BTW do you have a new stupid ad we can bitch about yet?
jl
Mankiw’s job right now is to kick up as much dust as possible. So he would just provide link to some proposal he could not vouch for.
And in the eyes of the GOP leadership (Limbaugh and Beck) Feldstein has become a communist.
So, you will have to think of two other economists to come up with a GOP plan.
ominira
@cleek: Thanks for that link. Now I know what Baucus’s committee will be pushing.
DougJ
So, you will have to think of two other economists to come up with a GOP plan.
Casey Mulligan and Eugene Fama.
freelancer
@mrmobi:
That’s not an exaggeration:
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200908200032
Limbaugh tells caller who can’t afford $6,000 to treat broken wrist: “Well, you shouldn’t have broken your wrist”
That soundbyte needs to be the new 30-second spot. Once again, hang Limbaugh around their necks.
MattF
There’s no GOP plan because the wingers really only want to trash Obama. And also, a real health plan involves icky things like numbers and sick people who need insurance. Booooriiiiing.
The Grand Panjandrum
Thanks for the tip on HR 3400. I’m going to read it and write up a critic of it at my place. Maybe somebody will linky when done? Ahem …
But here is link to HR 3400 at the gummint site. Be careful; Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are watching.
Trollhattan
@mrmobi&Freelancer:
“Only losers get sick, maggot!”(tm)
jl
@DougJ: They are good economists and very sincere. Those are good suggestions. Mulligan is actually a very good economists, and his research in micro and international social security programs is very good and thoughtful. His macro is purely real business cycle theory. You can search his blog at the NY Times and judge for yourself how accurately his predictions have been (compared to Stiglitz, Galbraith, Roubini and Krugman, for example).
Fama?
I would propose John Cochrane, who has produced innovative analyses of some problems with health insurance. His solution to the problems he identified is to remove what he perceives to be bad state regulations and sit back and wait for the market to solve the problems he found. I would totally disagree with his proposal, but I have no doubt his analysis would be good.
So, I counter propose Mulligan and Cochrane
The Grand Panjandrum
@The Grand Panjandrum: I have no idea why my link didn’t work but here is link to HR 3400.
Just Some Fuckhead
More insurance deregulation seems to be the main talking point I hear.
jacy
@ freelancer:
One thing the little wankers have learned from Sully is how to spout off about something and shortly return to say said spouting was wrong.
One of them — they all sound alike to me — spouted off about how Scalia’s “Let’s execute innocent people” dissent was actually good constitutional law, only to come back a litte later and say that, no, not so much. Nevermind
They’re the fucking Emily Littelas of adolescent “conservatism.”
Sully’s prententious enough, but at least he’s fucking British.
freelancer
@The Grand Panjandrum:
copy/paste.
HTML fail is go!
General Winfield Stuck
Last I heard it was all of 4 pages and offered varieties of the same theme
tax cuts
Tax Cuts
TAX CUTS
and the highly innovative
Tax cuts for rich motherfuckers
jl
On second thought, Mulligan does not hate the US social security system, so he might be considered a commie too, even though he is a ‘very free unregulated market is best’ kind of economist.
Comrade Mary
Limbaugh: “Get government and its stupid regulations out of it, get the government out of Medicare.” Sheesh.
Oh, and it’s the caller’s fault that his wrist costs $6000 because he’s not paying for it.
Chad N Freude
@Carl Nyberg:
That will work because medical care is a fungible commodity, like oil and pork bellies. Once the medical market system is in place, Wall Street geniuses can bundle doctor’s appointments into health Care packages and sell them to the public.
freelancer
@jacy:
One of them—they all sound alike to me—spouted off about how Scalia’s “Let’s execute innocent people” dissent was actually good constitutional law, only to come back a litte later and say that, no, not so much. Nevermind
That’s actually the post I linked to.
@Comment is here.:
“Yeah I was totally pwned by ppl who’ve, y’know, read the Constitution, but I think my larger point still stands.”
Patrick isn’t so bad, I think he’s one of Sully’s intern underlings if I’m not mistaken, but the Conors are awful. That particular post reveals that Conor Clarke is so fucking stupid, we’re probably going to see him asking questions at the next White House Presser, in between Tapper, and Todd.
Kirk Spencer
@Demo Woman: Basically, it’s tax credits for insurance premiums. If you’re low income you can get the credit in advance.
$2000 per year for individual. $4000 for joint. An additional $500 per dependent up to two dependents (yeah).
For every thousand dollars your AGI is over 200% that year’s poverty level the amount is reduced by 1%. So a family of four could get $5000 per year if their income is $36,000, and it goes to zero at $136,000.
The rest of the clauses are fairly standard for Republican bills. No payment for abortions and such, credits cannot reduce tax below zero, slams on medicare and medicaid, that sort of thing.
LarryB
I find it unsurprising that the GOPers aren’t advancing their own proposal. That would mean they’d have to sell it.
When I was a sprout I joined the High School debate club. The format of American-style debate is that there was a topic (e.g., “Resolved: the Federal government should fund public education” — heh, it was the 70’s). One side is for the proposition. To win, you had to do more than just say, “yeah, I agree with that because…”. You had to propose a plan that would implement it. On the negative side, you had 2 choices: You could sit back and shoot holes in the proposition and the plan. Or, you could advance a counter-plan. This basically meant you rolled over on the basic proposition and said, “Well, ok, we agree that … BUT we have a much better way of going about it.” It was a given that the counter-plan strategy was high-risk: Not only did you cede all of the factual ground covered by the basic proposition, you now exposed yourself to counter-sniping on the details of your plan.
stinkwrinkle
Doug+7??!!?
I was considering having a few this evening, but that settles it. Time zone UTC+7 REPRESENT!
Kirk Spencer
@Kirk Spencer: (I miss edit) There are no cost containment elements, by the way. Nothing to prevent the insurance companies from – just by coincidence, of course – increasing average premiums by a few thousand dollars per year.
Chad N Freude
@freelancer:
The link didn’t make it into the posted comment.
asiangrrlMN
Because, shut up, that’s why! Also! Wolverines! Hm. I feel like having a drink or two tonight. I gotta find my rum….
Da Bomb
I wonder if their health care plan will have pie charts and bar graphs! Also.
freelancer
HTML has now been officially “wordpres” ‘d.
I’m going to test something and forgive me if this is the slightest bit annoying.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/08/the-madness-of-antonin-scalia-ctd.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/08/the-madness-of-antonin-scalia-ctd.html
8th Amendment? What’s that?
Or just Google “The Madness of Antonin Scalia, ctd”
Which one of those worked, if any?
Zifnab
@Carl Nyberg:
It ghettoizes the system. You end up with a stratified collection of doctors – the high end professionals, the mid range emergency room style caretakers, and the bottom rung of quacks and charlatans. No one is regulated so there’s no one to tell you that leeches aren’t a cure-all or psychic surgery won’t fix your cancer.
And the big joke is that it doesn’t help the rich or the poor. You end up with the poor getting treated by witch doctors and snake oil salesmen and the rich getting treated by Rasputin – just a higher end version of the same. All so a bunch of cultural ideologues can indulge in free market wishful thinking.
lamh31
Personally, I’ve reached the point, where I’m not gonna fight this healthcare fight over the innertubes anymore. I’m gonna keeping advocating in my own personal way, but I’m done with the subject on the blogosphere. First because it’s not the only issue out there, it is the most prominent and it is important, but it’s not the only issue we need to hear about too. (i.e. Tom Ridge confirming that he was asked to raise the terror warning right before the 2004 election…ain’t that some shit).
Secondly, here’s my problem: 1) It’s hard to have real discussion or debate, when one side is outright lying and dishonest about the facts of the debate (I’m talking Repubs), 2) There is no final bill written and yet, everybody assumes they KNOW what will be in it already. And when you have 2 different assumptions about what is true, and if your on the same side, then neither of you have any idea if either assumptions actually factual, then it just leads to in-fighing, where you are arguing about things that may or may not happen in the future, then it becomes an exercise in futility. Neither of us really hears the other, and noting gets settled until the future happens. 3) Those who know, aren’t really talking, and yet, there are all these anon sources willing to discuss a bill that hasn’t been written yet. Personally, I hate anon sources (like the “anonymous” aide who made the “left of the left” comment), much the way, I kinda don’t like how anon blogging can be. I’m a believer that it does not really allow you to be “more truthful” if your anon. I actually think it just gives you cover to say anything you want, and shape conventional wisdom, without consequences, I’m not talking about “snitches” or legal informants and such, who are in fear of their lives). I’m of the school of thought, that if you truly believe that the info is factual, and you’re not putting yourself or your family or your love ones in any danger, then you need to put your name to it! Also, all anon sourcing does is allow you or I to attrribute what’s being sourced to whoever we want (usually in most cases wrongly).
So whenever I see something that is “anonymously” sourced, then I just take it with a grain of salt, until they can be proven better, i.e. the Bush 2004, terror alert thing from Tom Ridge today, finally truth from a non-anonymous soure, and not just our gut. Although, we should feel vidicated though.
Laura W
Meyer
It was a given that the counter-plan strategy was high-risk: Not only did you cede all of the factual ground covered by the basic proposition, you now exposed yourself to counter-sniping on the details of your plan.
Exactly. What is unfortunate here is that the public and the press are letting them get away with this.
It’s pretty obnoxious to have a guy in the room who always says “that cannot be done” without proposing any alternatives. Try it at your job – you won’t last two weeks before you are on plan or fired.
But somehow, an entire party which is supposedly trying to help govern this country is getting away with it, and has for almost nine months now.
Astounding.
John Cole
They can’t push health care legislation of their own for two reasons:
1.) That would require admitting their is a problem beyond shouting about medicare’s unfunded liabilities.
2.) Once people read their bill and heard the tax cut mantra on every talk show, the Democratic plan would look far better by comparison.
Leelee for Obama
My question is: How the hell does Doug only have one thing he doesn’t understand? I have so many, I can’t possibly live long enough to figure them all out!
OT-I watched the Barney Frank Town Hall, and it was AWESOME! Even though there were many audio problems, Barney was as shiny as a new penny!
Chad N Freude
@freelancer:
Didn’t try any of them, just went to the Dish and wandered around till I found it. All three of the links in the referenced comment work. I keep running into this problem, too. I WANT MY BUTTONS BACK!
The Dershowitz hypothetical (which is not the title of a Big Bang Theory episode) that Conor the Morally Deaf Guy links to is pretty good.
Zifnab
@John Cole: They were pushing health care tax credits under McCain all through ’08. The plan flopped, ironically for many of the same reasons Obama’s is struggling – few details, high costs, and no confidence that it would work.
McCain dropped line of attack because it was easier to campaign against Obama’s middle name and ACORN and Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers.
The Republicans still don’t like touching policy with anything shorter than a ten foot poll. The stimulus counter proposal was “no more taxes”. The economic recovery revolved around getting rid of the FDIC while more banks failed. Everything descends into birth certificates and dead grandparents. It’s nauseating.
BFR
They can’t push health care legislation of their own for two reasons:
They could push their own legislation but they have to move the discussion away from lack of access and towards cost containment before they can talk about their proposals.
That’s why you have to attack the 47M uninsured number.
ericvsthem
Slightly OT:
Semi-rhetorical question – what is the mechanism(s) to bring health care costs down without single payer or a public option? If health insurance reform is passed that restricts health insurance providers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, from dropping people when their bills reach a certain limit, and from dropping people just because the cost of certain treatments are too high, what’s to stop the health insurance companies from just jacking up premiums even further in order to retain their already obscene profit margins?
JenJen
@alien radio: Isikoff was on “Hardball” tonight, and I thought he broke some pretty big news… he says that the CIA report coming out on Monday will be absolutely devastating to Cheney.
David
I’d like to hear Obama say:
With the stroke of pen, Republican leaders could END THE SUFFERING OF MILLIONS but, sadly, they refuse.
Gary K
There’s another thing I don’t understand (and forgive the fact that this is off-topic): why is there an ad for Ann Coulter immediately above this posting? It’s so obnoxious that I had to scroll it out of the window before beginning to read.
Bruce Webb
I spent about ten seconds reading the official summary. The Rep plan boils down to this:
“If you pay federal taxes we will give you a credit so that the government has less money and you can partially (like 50%) pay for initial premiums on a private plan. But that credit phases out the less you actually pay in taxes.
If you don’t pay federal taxes on your adjusted gross income you get nothing you lazy ass slacker. You should have been born on third base like we were.”
Like all Rep plans (Health Savings Accounts, Education Accounts) a pretty good deal for those people, and especially self-employed people. making comfortably over the median (the haves) at a minimum cost to people making way, way over the median (Bush’s ‘have mores’)
Starve the beast. All Republican plans end up going down the same path. Anything to defund what they consider a welfare state.
General Winfield Stuck
This.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@Chad N Freude:
That’s an awesome idea. I can’t until hospitals are trading patient default swaps on 90-year-olds with prostate cancer.
freelancer
@JenJen:
Darth could skin a pregnant dog, devour a canine fetus on the season finale of American Idol while simultaneously taking a dump on the American Flag and Eric Holder would still be on the fence about “causing a Witch Hunt” and charging him with anything.
DougJ
@leelee
The title is a reference to beast of burden.
gbear
Your health insurance company can drop you for that.
Leelee for Obama
@tripletee (formerly tBone): I had crackers in my mouth when I read this, you devil! That’s some funny shit.
They really just want the poor to die out, don’t they? If only they would say it like that. Then, almost, sadly only almost, no one would vote for them.
arguingwithsignposts
The unintended consequence of the republican “plan” is that US middle class consumers will have even *less* discretionary income to pump into the economy, since they’ll be paying more for health insurance, thus ensuring the continuing downward spiral in the economy.
Of course, the health insurance cos. will have millions of new customers to screw without any cost controls, so there’s that.
Laura W
@DougJ: I woulda totally gotten that if you woulda put “Baby” where it belonged.
And maybe if I weren’t +
23Leelee for Obama
@DougJ: Oh,OK. I guess that’s a song I only vaguely remember, so I missed the whole point. Rats!
Mike in NC
Litlebritdifrnt
Okay ‘splain this one to me. I have car insurance. For every year that I go by without a claim my car insurance goes down, so whereas a couple of years ago it was $200 a month for two vehicles, since we have gone a couple of years without claims it is now $105.00 a month for two vehicles (full coverage). When my boss first started insuring me on the group policy (health insurance) he was paying $250.00 and some change. Since that time (1998) I have had no hospitalizations, I have not gone to the doctors more than once a year, in fact the last time I went to a doctor was 2004 when a horse fly bite took me out and I could no longer walk on the inflamed leg. I have not made a claim on my policy since 2004 and now my premium is up to $800. I am not on any medications, I am no drain on the insurance company at all, in fact I am a cash cow, we pay and pay and pay and the insurance company never has to pay out for me. Explain that one.
tc125231
@ominira: The very bestest. All those other countries with better outcomes and lower costs are biased by lifestyle. Even the deaths per 1000 treatable illnesses measure!
Hoew do I know? Megan McGerbil told me so!
freelancer
@Litlebritdifrnt:
“Shut UP! That’s Why! What are you some kind of Commie like Hitler! A National SoSHAList!?! We beat the Commies in Germany and Russia in WWII, but not because of Hitlers like YOU! Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! This country was built by Entre-penirs like Henry Ford who wouldn’t have anything to do with Nazi scumbags like you FDR New Deal loving libetards! The best things in the world and in America are the best because of the innovations of business and whatnot! Not because of government controlled Welfare State serv…
OH MY GOD! My dump truck’s on FIRE! I left my foam finger on the passenger seat. My Jesus bobblehead is gonna melt! SOMEBODY CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT!”
tc125231
@Chad N Freude: You are my hero. It’s thinking like THAT that made America what it is today.
…aspiring to become a Banana Republic.
tc125231
@Carl Nyberg: Well, increased mortality rates will certainly make it cheaper.
Republicans are big on reducing the “surplus” population –e.g. everybody besides the rich.
tc125231
@freelancer: Yeah, why I never read him, or Atlantic any more.
I have become allergic to stupid.
tc125231
Manamongst Hussein
Because they are pushing their little starship enterprise to the brink and they don’t have second to stray off-message.
To them that would be like rolling the window’s up in the Paris to Dakar rally to run the air conditioning…(that is if those cars actually had it)
They’re too busy paying the usual suspects money to bash the obama plan to pay them money to write positive articles about H.R. 3400.
Martian Buddy
Even if they could get some form of GaltCare through Congress, that would mean that Obama would get partial credit–that’s totally unacceptable in wingnut zero-sum math. (Of course, he’d also get partial blame when the usual poison cocktail of tax cuts and deregulation leads to a complete meltdown, but you can’t expect the wingnuts to see it that way.)
Mike D.
The reason they don’t is to maintain the implicit rejection of the premise of need for reform, while mouthing what is intended to be transparently (to the base) insincere desire for ‘reform.’ Their base is actually quite politically perceptive; it’s all a funny joke that the revanchist pols nod and smile and go along before killing or effectively killing any real reform — anything to thwart the librul (which is to say, not real) preznit.
T. O'Hara
They don’t like your plan for government takeover of the health care system, and yet they don’t propose their own plan for government takeover of the health care system?
They must be hypocrites!
Comrade Dread
Well, I’m sure there are some alternative reforms that could be tried, but few of them are palpable to the GOP.
I’ve long been an advocate of restarting (with government subsidies or tax credits) free (or low cost) clinics in poorer areas to take the burden off of emergency rooms and hospitals and get less serious illnesses taken care of before they get worse.
Of course, since this would be a ‘handout’ and would likely treat illegal immigrants (since doctors are all about their Hypocratic oath and helping people and not checking immigration status prior to providing medical assistance), the GOP would nix it.
I might take the GOP more seriously with regards to letting people buy insurance across state lines, if they also offered up regulations that would strictly prevent insurers from dropping members once they get sick.
While I agree economically that insurance and medicare shield people from the real costs of common medical care and make it more likely that people will use it more often, I don’t see us reverting to a pay-go system unless there is some sort of apocalypse, so that’s out.
CalD
Actually, it might be that the Republicans do have a serious alternative health care proposal in circulation. I’ve heard it said in both of the last two primary presidential campaigns that health care proposals from pretty much all Democratic candidates except Denny Kucinich and maybe Al Sharpton bore significant resemblance to the Republicans’ proposed alternative to “Hillarycare” back in the early 90s. (I blame Democrats for continually allowing Republicans to be the ones to brand their policy ideas.) There’s been a pretty remarkable consensus on the subject in fact and the bill that’s trudging through congress right now doesn’t sound substantially different from what I’ve heard proposed by a succession of Democratic presidential candidates, soooo….
Kirk Spencer
No, not really. That was the Chaffee plan, aka the Senate Republican Task Force Proposal on Health Care. It was actually more workable than the Clinton plan, but it’s significantly different than what’s running today. You can see a summary here if you’re interested.
Amusingly, both it and the Clinton plans would have been more profitable to the insurance companies than any of the Democratic plans presently under consideration. Essentially, they took Achilles’ choice, but for money instead of glory.