Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has proposed an alternative to the Obama administration’s socialized healthcare approach and it’s worth looking at. The quick summary points from his announcement are these:
The Health Care Freedom Plan:
- Protects the right of Americans to keep their employer-based plan without having to pay additional taxes on those benefits.
- Provides Americans without employer-based coverage with vouchers of $2000 for individuals and $5000 for families to purchase health insurance. The premium for the average private policy sold in the individual market in 2007 was $1,896 for an individual and $4,392 for a family (Source: eHealthInsurance)
- Allows Americans with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to use their HSA funds to pay for insurance premiums, encouraging employers to contribute to their employees’ HSAs.
- Creates a nationwide market for health insurance by allowing individuals to purchase health insurance plans in any state.
- Provides block grants to states to develop innovative models that ensure affordable health insurance coverage for Americans with pre-existing health conditions.
- Reduces predatory and frivolous malpractice lawsuits against physicians and hospitals.
- Assures that every health care consumer has access to price information prior to treatment so they can make informed decisions about their care.
- Repeals financial bailouts (TARP) to ensure that the plan does not add to the deficit.
This approach provides healthcare coverage for those who don’t have it already without the creation of a massive government bureacracy that would, by its entry into the private sector’s market, kill off the private insurers that are handling the healthcare needs of Americans today. It also keeps the federal government out of the doctor-patient relationship (or at least doesn’t make it worse) and continues to keep the individual in charge of their healthcare needs. This is definitely a superior approach. I’ll be looking at it in more detail to see if it answers all the questions.
June 23rd, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Medicine, Politics |
one comment
Excuse me?
But now some Latino leaders want illegal immigrants to boycott the national survey, claiming that being counted — but not represented — isn’t fair.
“It doesn’t make any sense, in some way it is immoral that we are counting 12 million undocumented immigrants who have no benefit at all financially speaking,” said Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders.
Rivera, whose conservative group of evangelicals is behind the boycott, admitted that telling undocumented immigrants not to participate in the Census is a radical step. But he said it is the only way to make a political point to push immigration reform.
Works for me. I don’t think people who aren’t supposed to be here, legally, should be counted in a census of American citizens and legal residents. If that’s what they’d like to do, go right ahead.
As other Latino leaders are saying, however, that’s a move that’s going to backfire on them, big-time. The census isn’t just a matter of finding out how many people are here. It’s used to determine things like financial and academic support to schools, appropriations for emergency responder teams, and both state- and federal-level support to local governments for all manner of public assistance programs. By purposely refusing to participate, the numbers for a given locality will go down. Now, unless those same illegals are saying they’re going to pack up and head back to their home country those assistance programs are still going to be seeing the same numbers of people asking for help. With the lower census numbers they just won’t have the resources to help a lot of those people asking.
Rivera’s a fool, frankly, for suggesting this action. In my opinion, he’s a damned fool for saying that everything would be just peachy if only we’d all just ignore the illegals’ thumbing of their noses at our laws and just give them full citizenship, right beside other people who followed the rules all along. Fool or not, if that’s his ultimatum – that we grant amnesty or they’ll sit the census out – then I say let ‘em sit out and enjoy the effects for the next 10 years.
June 23rd, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Crime & Punishment, Immigration, Law, Politics |
no comments
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