A Second Opinion

Saturday’s editorial holds President Obama to his word that he’s willing to take another look at bipartisan health care reform proposals.

As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we’ve proposed. There’s a reason why many doctors, nurses, and health care experts who know our system best consider this approach a vast improvement over the status quo. But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.

- President Obama, State of the Union address, Jan. 27

Senator Graham?

Could you please introduce the President to your friends, Mr. Wyden of Oregon and Mr. Bennett of Utah? And maybe, just for a touch of political theater, bring the new guy from the Bay State along? Maybe even your old friend John McCain as well?

Lost amid the shouting, the name-calling and the vindictiveness on both sides of 2009’s great national health-care soap opera was a fully-formed plan for reform that combined the best ideas from both sides of the aisle to accomplish all the goals the President – and most of the public – agree upon. U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, a liberal Democrat, and Bob Bennett, a conservative Republican, crafted a plan that would create near-universal coverage almost immediately (the goal of the left) while increasing the public’s access to a variety of competing private insurers (the goal of the right).

The bill would accomplish this by taking the huge Depression-era tax exemptions for health insurance away from employers and giving them to individuals, empowering Americans to buy their own insurance in the private market and to keep it when they change jobs. More choice, and thus, more competition. The tax exemptions, however, would phase out for couples earning over $250,000 (under our current system, millionaire brokers on Wall Street pay no income taxes on the money they spend their lavish health insurance plans, which cost several times those of average workers), and that tax revenue would be more than enough to give vouchers to the poor. Much of Medicaid could be phased out, rather than expanded as under the Obama plan.

Although a dozen centrist-leaning senators from both parties signed on (including South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham), the proposal never gained traction because of the fringe wing of each party: the hard-core liberals for whom government-sponsored (single-payer) health insurance is a goal unto itself, and hard-core conservatives who don’t believe the government should help the poor get insurance. In other words, Washington at work.

In June of last year, Obama told The Oregonian newspaper he agreed with “90 percent” of the Wyden-Bennet plan, but feared that “a ‘radical restructuring’ would meet ‘significant political resistance,’ Obama said, and ‘families who are currently relatively satisfied with their insurance but are worried about rising costs ... would get real nervous about a wholesale change.’”

“Significant political resisitance” and families “nervous about a wholesale change” sounds to us like a play-by-play description of everything after June anyway. With the spotlight now on centrist senators like the newly-elected Scott Brown of Massachusetts, perhaps it’s time to revist Wyden-Bennett, which was truly a better proposal than the Democrats’ plan from the start. If a coalition of Republicans who have shown a legitimate interest in solutions sign on to a bill that Obama already agrees with “90 percent” of, the entire United States stands to benefit.

Or, Washington egos can win the day, and Americans can anticipate another 5 percent jump in their insurance premiums next year.

Senator Graham?

Lost amid the shouting, the name-calling and the vindictiveness on both sides of 2009’s great national health-care soap opera was a fully-formed plan for reform that combined the best ideas from both sides of the aisle to accomplish all the goals the President – and most of the public – agree upon. U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, a liberal Democrat, and Bob Bennett, a conservative Republican, crafted a plan that would create near-universal coverage almost immediately (the goal of the left) while increasing the public’s access to a variety of competing private insurers (the goal of the right).

The bill would accomplish this by taking the huge Depression-era tax exemptions for health insurance away from employers and giving them to individuals, empowering Americans to buy their own insurance in the private market and to keep it when they change jobs. More choice, and thus, more competition. The tax exemptions, however, would phase out for couples earning over $250,000 (under our current system, millionaire brokers on Wall Street pay no income taxes on the money they spend their lavish health insurance plans, which cost several times those of average workers), and that tax revenue would be more than enough to give vouchers to the poor. Much of Medicaid could be phased out, rather than expanded as under the Obama plan.

Although a dozen centrist-leaning senators from both parties signed on (including South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham), the proposal never gained traction because of the fringe wing of each party: the hard-core liberals for whom government-sponsored (single-payer) health insurance is a goal unto itself, and hard-core conservatives who don’t believe the government should help the poor get insurance. In other words, Washington at work.

In June of last year, Obama told The Oregonian newspaper he agreed with “90 percent” of the Wyden-Bennet plan, but feared that “a ‘radical restructuring’ would meet ‘significant political resistance,’ Obama said, and ‘families who are currently relatively satisfied with their insurance but are worried about rising costs ... would get real nervous about a wholesale change.’”

“Significant political resisitance” and families “nervous about a wholesale change” sounds to us like a play-by-play description of everything after June anyway. With the spotlight now on centrist senators like the newly-elected Scott Brown of Massachusetts, perhaps it’s time to revist Wyden-Bennett, which was truly a better proposal than the Democrats’ plan from the start. If a coalition of Republicans who have shown a legitimate interest in solutions sign on to a bill that Obama already agrees with “90 percent” of, the entire United States stands to benefit.

Or, Washington egos can win the day, and Americans can anticipate another 5 percent jump in their insurance premiums next year.

Senator Graham?