To be fair, there are areas in which the President has sought to make up for the shortcomings of Democrats’ costly government takeover of health care. It was encouraging when the President’s pledge to Congress that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions” was followed by a meeting at the White House with pro-life activists. It turns out, however, that the Administration would not commit to inserting a provision that explicitly excludes abortion from health care reform.
Thus, the status quo remains: House Democrats’ health care legislation would allow the U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services to include abortion as a benefit in the government-run health care option.
It was also encouraging when the President assured law-abiding taxpayers that illegal immigrants should not and will not be covered under the Democrats’ health care plan. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service has confirmed, however, that there is no mechanism included in the House bill to verify that individuals are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants before they receive government benefits.
House Republicans offered two amendments in the committee process to correct this: the first would have prevented illegal immigrants from being automatically enrolled into Medicaid and the second would have required better screening for applicants for federally-subsidized health care to ensure they are actually citizens or legal immigrants. Both were rejected by Democrats.
These are just a couple of the many ideas House Republicans have offered to improve Americans’ health care. For instance, why not allow small employers to group together through national associations so they can buy health insurance for their employees like big companies and unions can today? Why not allow the American people to buy health care plans across state lines? Why not get serious about ending junk lawsuits and more importantly the costly defensive medicine that doctors are forced to practice?
We outlined these proposals in a letter to the President back in May and asked to sit down with him and discuss them. The response we received essentially said ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
For his part, the President has talked about a “whole series of Republican ideas” being included in health care reform. This is just another myth perpetuated by the President, whose rhetoric simply doesn’t match the reality of congressional Democrats’ government-run health care proposals.
This isn’t about calling out President Obama for the sake of doing so. The American people deserve to know the unvarnished truth about the potential consequences of this costly government takeover of their health care. The President’s failure to meet this common-sense standard is yet another indication it’s time to hit the reset button and start over in a bipartisan way to achieve health care reforms hard-working Americans can support and afford.