Healthcare: Let The States Decide

by Warner Todd Huston | June 9, 2011 11:49 am

The debate about healthcare coming from the Democrats is steeped in purposeful misdirection on one hand and a complete lack of any real knowledge about what Obamacare will even do on the other. It is also a major overreach on a federalism level which is why it is hard to understand why more people aren’t talking about the Healthcare Compact plan (healthcarecompact.org[1]).14 states have already signed onto it and has even been signed into law in two of them, Georgia and Oklahoma.

Of course, the problem is that we are expected to believe that Obamacare — which is essentially a nationalized healthcare policy — will work just fine on a national level. Despite that history has proven over and over again that centralized planning simply does not work, most especially with something as unwieldy and complicated as healthcare.

It doesn’t help that we are not being told the truth by those pushing Obama’s plan, either. Many times the president has claimed that with Obamacare you can “keep your health care plan” if you like it, you can keep your doctor if you like him. This, however, has been generously called a “questionable[2]” promise. And that isn’t the only untruth coming from Obamacare supporters.

Just this week it was revealed[3] that as much as 30% of the businesses in America that offer their employees healthcare plans will stop that practice once Obamacare kicks in. This number is likely low, too, as once bigger businesses start to jettison their healthcare plans it will start a snowball rolling down hill that will gather up nearly every other business with it.

Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is compromised at this on in the debate[4]. The CBO has just hired an Obamacare pusher straight from the White House to become the CBO’s deputy assistant director in its Health and Human Resources (HHR) Office. This woman, Melinda Beeuwkes, has been an advocate of Obamacare, worked to push Obamacare in Obama’s administration, and has been a large donor to Democrats and Obama both.

Yet the CBO thinks this woman can provide, “objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget.” This does not fill one with confidence that even the CBO can be unbiased.

It seems fairly clear at this point that America has been sold a bill of goods with Obamacare and no holds are barred to push its unpopular and ineffective policies. So, what is to be done?

The Health Care Compact[5] could be that answer.

As the website says:

The Health Care Compact is an interstate compact — which is simply an agreement between two or more states that is consented to by Congress — that restores authority and responsibility for health care regulation to the member states (except for military health care, which will remain federal), and provides the funds to the states to fulfill that responsibility.

The idea here is that the states will band together and share resources. They will cooperate with regulatory efforts, share demographic data, and insurance information to assist their own legislatures to better respond to the healthcare needs of their own citizens.

Importantly, the compact will assist states to make healthcare decisions locally as opposed to having healthcare decisions made in far away Washington D.C. In fact, this limited government, local control concept is exactly the sort of idea that fits perfectly with the ideas of our founders. It is the perfect 10th Amendment-style idea.

As I said, two governors have already signed the compact into law. When he signed the bill in his state Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia said[6], “a large majority of Georgians believe that we here are better equipped to manage our state’s health care needs than a one-size-fits-all plan under Obamacare.”

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin also signed onto the compact. She did so because she felt Obamacare did not meet the needs of her state[7]. She felt that Obamacare failed because it did not “give states more flexibility to design and implement health care programs to fit the specific needs of their citizens.”

Texas Governor Rick Perry has also spoken in favor of The Health Care Compact[8].

This Health Care Compact idea is intriguing and is well worth a try before we are inundated with the travesty that is Obamaare built of socialist ideas that have been proven to fail over and over again.

I urge you to contact your state senators and state representatives and encourage them to get on board with The Health Care Compact[5] immediately. Providing states with the authority for their own federal health care dollars is a clear solution to Obamacare.

Endnotes:
  1. healthcarecompact.org: http://healthcarecompact.org/
  2. questionable: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/07/president-obama-continues-questionable-you-can-keep-your-health-care-promise.html
  3. revealed: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/firms-halting-coverage-as-reform-starts-survey-2011-06-06
  4. (CBO) is compromised at this on in the debate: http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/06/cbo-hires-obamacare-advocate-to-provide-objective-health-care-budget-numbers/
  5. The Health Care Compact: http://healthcarecompact.org/
  6. Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia said: http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/deal-signs-health-compact-918391.html
  7. Obamacare did not meet the needs of her state: http://capitolbeatok.com/CustomContentRetrieve.aspx?ID=3911181
  8. Rick Perry has also spoken in favor of The Health Care Compact: http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2011/jun/06/bc-tx-xgr-health-care-compact/?sports&texa

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