Republicans Continue to Filibuster but Offer up Little Detail on Their Own Ideas

With next week’s health care summit between Republicans and President Obama, Republicans must show that they weren’t filibustering for the sake of holding party lines. This includes coming up with proposals on ways to reform health care in the United States.

Thus far, Republicans have blocked legislation but offered up very little in terms of possible alternatives. They want the bill to be completely scrapped and started anew but haven’t offered up a serious detailed option. President Obama wants to bring the current bills to the table during next week’s meeting. It is unclear whether the White House and Republicans are truly willing to work with each other.

Republicans have started to lay out their ideas of reform that they will present at the summit. They would mostly deal with emphasizing tax incentives and state innovations, and not push federal mandates. Some ideas they could end up introducing in the summit include:

• Relying on free market competition among insurers, rather than the government.
• No requirement for employers to provide insurance.
• Insurance companies would be able to sell across state lines, an idea already included in limited form in Democratic bills.
• Offering federal money as a reward to states that decrease the number of uninsured and establish and expand high-risk pools for uninsured people with chronic illnesses.
• Change state medical malpractice laws to lower costs and slow premium increases.
• Expand the use of HSAs (health savings accounts) to cover the expenses of people enrolled in high-deductible health plans.
• Republicans want to expand the role of private insurers in Medicare.

On some issues, Republicans and Democrats even agree with each other. Both parties want to emphasize preventive and wellness health programs, provide transparency for price and quality data on doctors and hospitals, speed up generic drug approvals, allow dependent children to stay on their parents’ policies till age 25 or 26 and make it easier for small businesses to obtain insurance.

Still, even if Republicans introduce any of these ideas, they fall short of the proposed plans issued by Democrats.  In an attempt to control the cost of comprehensive legislation the Republicans won’t come close to covering the more than 30 million people that would be able to attain insurance under the Democrats’ proposals.