Dear Everyone;
The WSJ had the article below on the battle shaping up in Congress between Republicans and Democrats on healthcare. The WSJ solicits email responses to the article for publication and my slash and burn LTE response was one of those published along with several others of a similar nature. 
Ron Getty
SF Libertarian
Socialized Medicine Showdown
It's time for some GOP spine on health care.
BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Friday, June 29, 2007 12:01 a.m.
While most of Congress scrapped over immigration this week, a small band of Republicans doggedly toiled behind the scenes on quite a different subject. National Economic Council Director Al Hubbard and health secretary Mike Leavitt shuttled to and from the Hill; Senators hashed out the topic at a steering committee lunch; congressmen canvassed members, wrote and wrote legislation. Even President Bush gave a speech on the subject, exhorting his party to get it together.
The result--if Republicans know what's good for them--may be a broad new GOP health-care vision, a free-market reform to replace today's faltering employer-based system. The party has circled this for years, throwing out free-market ideas here and there, yet never proved unified (or brave) enough to get behind one bold, top-to-bottom reform. Democrats are now forcing their hand.
The setting is the upcoming debate over the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or Schip, a brawl that could well determine the future direction of U.S. health care. Democrats see expanding Schip as the first step toward socialized medicine. If Republicans fail to meet that challenge with their own more compelling plan for market-based, consumer-driven reform, it may prove the beginning of the end of today's private model.
If that sounds dramatic, consider the Democrats' strategy. The left still bears the wounds of HillaryCare, and knows that even with spiraling health-care costs, the nation still has little appetite for an abrupt shift to all-government care. So they've developed a craftier approach, one that takes longer but gets them to the same end.
The new plot is to enact national health care one citizen at a time, slowly expanding the reach of existing government programs until they encompass the population.
Schip is the first step. The program, with its $25 billion budget, was originally designed to provide insurance to only the poorest children. Democrats want to throw an additional $60 billion at it, expanding Schip's rolls by three million. They would expand eligibility so much that as many as half joining would drop private insurance to do so. Even adults could sign up.
Next: Even as Democrats work to expand Schip to cover older Americans, they'd expand Medicare to cover younger Americans. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell is said to have recently floated the idea of allowing the struggling Big Three auto makers to enroll workers in Medicare at the age of 55, or 10 years early. Consider this a pilot program for dropping Medicare's age limit overall and instantly subjecting tens of millions more Baby Boomers to the government's tender care.
Democrats will meanwhile argue the only way to pay for Schip and other expanded programs is to gut Medicare Advantage and similar free-market reforms. See how clever? Swallow up ever more Americans into federal programs, banish any last vestiges of popular market plans, and voilà! It is Hillarycare! Only nobody ever had to use the dreaded word!
Republicans beat back the original HillaryCare by warning about Canadian waiting lines, but a negative message alone won't do this time. Our third-party-payer system, while still stacks better than France, is nonetheless collapsing--and Americans know it. Republicans can't simply be against socialized care, while not being for anything else. The left also chose its first battle wisely, with a program for "the children." The GOP's only Schip response so far has been to grouse about cost. And it's realizing a message of "We're for the children, just not as much as them," isn't a political winner.
This week's backroom talks--led by health-care innovators Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint in the Senate, and Paul Ryan and Jim McCrery in the House--were therefore about getting beyond Schip. The goal: a system that eliminates today's corporate subsidy and gives the money to individuals, cutting costs and reducing the number of uninsured. The political message: Dems want to put a few million more under government control for $60 billion, Republicans want to put 300 million in charge of their own care at zero extra cost.
The good news is that after 10 years of tinkering, Republicans have laid the foundation for bigger reform, from Health Savings Accounts to tort liability reform. The more intense policy debate this week instead focused on the biggie: how to revamp the tax code to get that money to individuals. On one side are tax wonks, among them Sen. Jon Kyl, who prefer giving every American a tax deduction--as President Bush has advocated. They argue it does the least damage to the tax code, and is less of a handout. On the other side are health-care wonks, among them Sen. Coburn, who prefer a refundable tax credit. They argue it does more to help with the uninsured, and is coincidentally a better political sell.
By the end of this week, the architects were coalescing around a tax-credit approach, on the belief it will attract the most GOP support. In a signal of White House approval, President Bush deliberately noted in his speech Wednesday that a tax credit would have a "similar outcome" to his deduction plan, and that he was "open to further discussion." Word was that Republican leaders were also climbing on board, with all concerned hoping to debut something big in coming weeks.
The challenge then will be to get the rest of the party to overcome its nervelessness on health care. The ringleaders of today's effort admit they may have to do a Sen. Phil Gramm, who in 1993 led by example, singlehandedly tearing into HillaryCare, proving his position a winner with voters, and pulling his colleagues in line.
They'll need to roll up their sleeves. Most Republicans don't understand health care, so don't want to talk about it; many grimace at voting down money for "kids"; quite a few face tough elections and would rather not jump into an unknown debate. Reformers also aren't getting cover from should-be allies. Insurers and lobby groups like PHRMA--who ought to understand that a bigger Schip is a threat to their long-term business--are instead focused on short-term profits and PR images. Republican governors--who'd be huge beneficiaries of an individualized market--seem to only care about keeping federal dollars flowing into state coffers.
Democrats will hail a Schip victory as an example of how they can help Americans on their top concern of health care. They want to ride it to the White House and to bigger congressional majorities, making it that much easier to institute incremental national health care. If Republicans don't unify now, they might not get a better chance.
Ms. Strassel is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, based in Washington. Her column appears Fridays.
Socialized Medicine Showdown
BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Perspective
Bruce Currie - Glen Ellyn, Ill.
Thanks so much for putting this important issue into a clearer light. My Aunt and Uncle live in Canada and do not enjoy their lines. On the other hand, I understand that U.S. Citizens pay on average only $.14 of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S., which leads to people not internalizing the costs of care.
Good Questions
Bob Hallifax - Canandaigua, N.Y.
Why can't we deregulate hospitals the way we deregulated trucking? Why can't we increase the supply of health care the way we increased the supply of food? Why can't we minimize the demand for health care by using free markets for lower cost items and insurances for what insurance does best: protect against unmanangeable losses?
A Clear Choice
Roger Bleier - Houston, Texas
Free markets work wonderfully where they apply. The basic question is does a pure free market comport with universal healthcare. If so, how? If not, which one has to go?
Thank You
Peggy Hayden - Salesville, Ohio
Thank you for this concise summary of the work some lesser known Republicans are doing on Health Care Reform. I am so encouraged.
We need medical insurance to be paid by individuals (like every other insurance we have) and we need to have providers go back to competing for our business: one at a time (like every other industry).
I'm sure if we each paid the bill annually, we would see prices go down due to the competition in a free market.
Says Who?
William Batley - Riesel, Texas
Just what section of the Constitution allows the Federal government to be in the Health Care business at all?
If either party had any spine at all they would be working to curtail, not expand this boondoggle.
Elimination Round
Ron Getty - San Francisco, Calif.
Congressional healthcare reform neglects a simple cure to solving the healthcare crisis. I guarantee this cure is worse than the disease.
Eliminate all licensing standards for hospitals, pharmacies, doctors, nurses, medical personnel, medical colleges and medical clinics. Licensing standards are nothing more than blocks to medical competition. Competition means price reduction.
Eliminate the FDA. Deregulate the medical insurance industry. Repeal the HMO Act of 1970. Eliminate Medicare and Medicaid. Eliminate any other government program of any kind providing any type of medical benefits.
Compel the states to do likewise and stop states from mandating health insurance companies to cover every damn thing under the sun. Repeal any laws requiring any employer to provide health insurance of any kind under any circumstances. This would include workers compensation medical benefits. Employers wishing to be attractive can provide some mutually agreeable health plan to attract quality workers with the cost factors split accordingly between employer and employees.
Get the government and the taxes forcibly taken from us out of the healthcare business.
Government 'Care'
Tibor Csipan - Pensacola, Fla.
Only a "sicko" would want one's doctor to become a government bureaucrat. We must first ponder about all contacts with all government clerks, paper pushers and politicians-- from TSA to IRS. All of them certainly deeply care about you.