Pence: Public option too big a hurdle for debate on rest of bill

Republicans sense blood in the water over the public plan. Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) tells Joe Scarborough and former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford that Republicans want real health-care reform, not a government takeover of the system. Mike Barnicle tries to pin Pence on what he likes in the ObamaCare bill, HR3200, but Pence says that the threat of government takeover makes the entire bill unacceptable:

Partial transcript:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Do you think health care reform is dead?

REP. PENCE: Well, I hope not. I really believe that we ought to take some bipartisan action to lower the cost of health insurance, and to lower the cost of health care. But I hope that the plan – the Democrats’ initiative on Capitol Hill to introduce a government plan, a public option that would result in a government takeover of health care paid for with about $800 billion in higher taxes is dead. Judging from the town hall meetings that I have had in Indiana and what we have seen around the country, I think there are millions of Americans who don’t want to see a public option and don’t want to see a government takeover.

SCARBOROUGH: Very quickly, what’s the Republican alternative? What is the Republican plan you would like to see passed?

REP. PENCE: Well, it’s not very different than what Harold Ford just described. I give a shout-out to my old friend Harold Ford sitting there. He made mention of the fact of malpractice reform and dealing with issues like preexisting conditions and lowering the cost of health insurance. Republicans believe that, in addition to tort reform, what we ought to do is allow Americans to purchase health insurance the way that Members of Congress can, the way all federal employees can, and that’s to buy health insurance across state lines. To get out there and allow new insurance products to be created in a new competitive marketplace. In between allowing for nationwide health insurance products to be created, and allow people to be choosey shoppers in a truly competitive market and that plus responsible malpractice reform and I think you are pretty far away down the road toward curing what ails health insurance and health care in the country.

***

HAROLD FORD JR.: Mike, good to see you this morning. Thanks for the kind words. Let me be clear, though – so you are saying Republicans in the House could support an insurance reform bill that addressed pre-existing conditions and insurance companies that deny coverage when a family member gets sick, malpractice reform, and it could even support expanding coverage for children at the poverty level and right above the poverty level, is that something you think could win? Again, the details would have to be worked out but do you think that could win Republican support?

REP. PENCE: …I think that we can talk about throwing in information technology. I think we can talk about some of those things, as long as we are talking about lowering the cost of health insurance by bringing real competition within the private health insurance economy itself. I think that what we have to see the administration walk away from, and frankly we have to see Democrats in Congress walk away from is this insistence, this demand, on the creation of a public option that most of the people in my district, and I’ll bet most people back in Tennessee, Harold, at these town hall meetings know that if the government starts offering a health insurance option, tens of millions of Americans are going to lose their health insurance at their current employer because their bosses are going to say ‘look, we’re going to pay the 8% payroll tax and tell you to go down the street and sign up for the government program or the government exchange.’ As long as we can walk away from the public option, we could have a reasonable debate about all of these other issues. And, again, I think we should do something to lower the cost of health insurance for working families and small businesses.

MIKE BARNNICLE: Off of what Harold just asked you, what – if anything – is in the bill in that is front of the House right now, what do you like in it? What do you favor in it?

REP. PENCE: What do I favor in the bill? You know, Mike, it really is hard to look past that massive government plan. You know, the so-called ‘exchanges’ with the public option. But even the private insurance elements in the exchanges are essentially government controlled and government dictated. What you have got in the vision that Democrats reported out of the Energy and Commerce Committee is just a massive expansion of the federal government’s role that I believe, as Barney Frank has suggested, would put us on the path toward socialized medicine. Barney Frank said on video that if you have the public option, I think he said that’s the fastest way to get to single payer and I agree. So, it’s hard to look past that elephant in the room and find much there that we agree with.

Not transcribed is a strange analogy from Barnicle about cars and paint.  Barnicle tried to argue that the public option just amounts to the paint job on a car one considers buying.  Pence laughed it off, but we could do this car analogy all day long.  The public option is:

• Seatbelts that never release after the first time you fasten them.
• A Hummer with a lawnmower engine.
• A Trabant.  (Which is like a Yugo with a lawnmower engine.)
• A car that forces drivers to let the government steer.
• A car with a radio that only tunes in NPR.  Good times, good times.

The public option is a lot more than just the veneer of ObamaCare; as Barney Frank and Jan Schakowsky point out repeatedly, it’s the heart and soul of it.  They want it in order to squeeze private insurers out of the health-care industry altogether and have government dictate allocation of resources.  Under those conditions, and especially with Obama himself about to part company with it‘, there really is no basis on which to negotiate.

Unfortunately, Pence never gets around to mentioning HR2520, the comprehensive Republican reform plan offered by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).  The GOP needs to keep pressing that, especially to rebut the false notion that Republicans have not offered any alternatives to ObamaCare.

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