The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

Where Is the President’s Health Care Reform Bill?

By Barrett Duke - Sep 16, 2009 - 1 -

In his September 9, 2009, speech to Congress, President Obama delivered a broad outline of key components he says are in his health care reform package. The president declared, “The plan I’m announcing tonight would meet three basic goals.”

He went on to give some “details that every American needs to know about this plan.” He called it “my plan” and “my health care proposal.” He said, “The plan that I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years.” Evidently, President Obama has a health care reform plan.

The main problem with what I heard is that I don’t know what plan the president is talking about. Many of the features he described do not exist in any of the bills Congress is working on. They aren’t in the liberal Democrats’ bills. They aren’t in any bill from the Blue Dog Democrats, who haven’t written one. They aren’t in the Republicans’ bills, and there are at least five that Republicans are trying to get people to notice.

For example, I found myself wondering what insurance exchange the president was talking about. Is it like Henry Waxman’s bill, H.R. 3200, which mandates what coverages must be in every policy in the exchange? And does it follow H.R. 3200 in preventing insurance companies from selling new policies that don’t offer the government-mandated coverages? Does he have something entirely different in mind? I’d like to know.

I also wonder about the president’s not-for-profit option. None of the bills under consideration include this. But since it’s in the president’s plan, I wonder how this option will “keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable.” He says the public option will be able to eliminate some overhead that “gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries.” Are we looking at something like Fannie Mae or the Post Office? If so, I am skeptical. Neither of these government-supported programs has managed to operate efficiently or responsibly. And we certainly can’t look to them as models of restraint when it comes to executive salaries and benefits. The Postmaster General received $800,000 in salary and benefits in 2008. The former CEO of Fannie Mae received over $90 million in pay and bonuses during his six years at Fannie Mae. Lower level employees in these organizations also have been paid very well.

The president also said, “Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.” I haven’t seen this in any of the bills the Democrats are working on. In fact, most of them have resisted every effort to put language in their bills guaranteeing that no federal funds would be spent on abortion. I was more surprised by the president’s affirmation that conscience laws will remain in place since he already has ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to start weakening conscience protections for health care practitioners. I really would like to see this language in the President’s plan.

And the president is still thinking about whether or not to add things such as tort reform to his plan. He can’t possibly be talking about any of the bills currently under consideration. None of the Democrat bills even come close to addressing the problems caused by predatory lawsuits and the defensive medicine doctors must practice to protect themselves from lawsuits. Yet the president admitted that “defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs.” He said he was ordering HHS to develop demonstration projects to help develop some data on it. If the president will not back tort reform until he has some numbers to look at, then health care reform should be delayed until we know what conclusion he reaches and whether or not that will be included in his health care reform bill.

The president’s target date for implementing his exchange interested me as well. He plans to wait four years, which he says will “give us time to do it right.” Surely, if the plan will not even help a single person for the next four years, Congress can take more than the next couple of weeks or months to arrive at a compromise bill the American people will support. In fact, if the president actually has his own plan, we should give him the time to write it, including those pesky “significant details” that need to be “ironed out,” and send it over to Congress so they don’t have to keep trying to guess at what the president wants.

Obviously, the president has a health care reform plan. So where is it? When do we get to see it? I was encouraged by some of what I heard Wednesday night, but it doesn’t square with anything I’ve seen in Congress so far. Senator Tom Coburn made the same observation. He remarked, “It was a good speech, the problem is that what he wants and what they’ve written are two totally different things.” I agree. So I am looking for a bill that we can read to come from the White House. And here’s hoping that it doesn’t arrive DOA, just like all the current Democrat proposals.

Barrett Duke is vice president for public policy and research for the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. In early August, the ERLC released a nine-page analysis of H.R. 3200 (280 KB – PDF). It is available online at erlc.com.

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