Republicans, unite, formulate a long term legislative plan, formulate bills to accomplish the plan, compromise, and pass the bills like Democrats.
The Republican Party, unlike the Democrat Party, appears to value egotistical arrogance and individualism over party. Republicans show little if any willingness for internal compromise to achieve purportedly common objectives. In my opinion, Republicans actually value individualism over the good of the nation and unity for the sake of governance. Consequently, unless Republicans adopt an attitude of unity, the Republican Party may not be able to govern effectively in the foreseeable future. In the US House of Representatives, Republicans may as well be three of four distinct parties because that is how they function. Republicans in the US Senate appear to have at least two factions, moderates and RHINOs and conservatives equally individualistic and unwilling to compromise. Finally, many Republicans in the legislative branch appear to be more allied with Democrats in opposition to President Trump.
My opinion is based on the absence of effective realistic action based on campaign rhetoric and failure to pass major promised legislation in a timely manner. The mere fact that Republicans promised to Repeal and Replace Obamacare for at least six years without ever agreeing among themselves to an actual piece of legislation to accomplish their promise to constituents is astoundingly incompetent. If an effective and meaningful replacement is not enacted before 2018, that failure should result in primary challenges to the whole congressional Republican delegation in the US House of Representatives and Senate. The same should be said about making personal tax reductions permanent, border control, meaningful immigration reform including a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals solution, and an end to local “Sanctuary” policies.
On the other hand, the Democrat Party is philosophically Marxist especially in relation to individualism. For Democrats, individuals submit to the good or will of the group as a whole. Consequently, individual Democrat legislators are more likely to compromise and follow the party line to pass legislation even when bills do not satisfy all of their requirements. Democrats are more willing than Republicans to take an incremental approach to accomplish their strategic long term goals. In addition, the divisions within the Democrat Party are primarily related to the pace of implementation of governance based on Marxist philosophy such as varying income redistribution plans related to taxation, environmentalism and climate change, healthcare, education, regulation, welfare, and other statist policies. The strategic objective of the Democrat Party is a US society where all citizens share equally in the benefits of society regardless of their ability or willingness to contribute to society. Democrats place no time constraints for accomplishment of this goal making an incremental approach and compromise quite acceptable. This is always true when the compromise leads toward the final goal.
Congressional Republicans must abandon their pride, arrogance, and egotistical individualism and start working together for the good We the People and the United State of America. Time for accomplishment is running out. Healthcare solutions, all immigration issues, permanent personal tax rates must be completed before the 2018 election. Congressional Republicans must remain strategically conservative while adopting the tactical attitude of cooperation employed by the Democrat Party in the US Congress.
Without healthcare and tax reform, Republicans will lose control of the US House and Senate.
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The GOP must develop a procedure to unite the disparate factions of the party or fail to serve We the People. We need action.
The failure of the GOP House majority to pass the first phase of the healthcare repeal and replacement legislation demonstrates the dysfunction and impotency of the Republican Party. The failure demonstrated that Republicans have three, possibly four, political divisions not one unified party. The GOP is composed of liberal Republicans or RINOS (Republicans in name only), moderate Republicans, and various forms of conservatives including social and physical conservatives. The healthcare reform legislation failure demonstrates that the divisions within the GOP are effectively distinct political parties with distinct and, in this case irreconcilable, differences. If Republicans fail to develop a procedure to manage, control, and unite the disparate factions of the party, the GOP will continue to be dysfunctional and impotent. Consequently, Republicans will cease to be an effective political force in the United States of America. The GOP will cease to be the Grand Old Party and become the Geriatric Obsolete Party.
The GOP is dysfunctional because its leadership lacked the strategic ability to unite the party and forward a complete, cogent, understandable healthcare plan that could be supported by the majority of the party and marketed to the public. At the most, the leadership had seven years to accomplish this vital task and failed. At least, the leadership had four to six months to accomplish this task and still failed. They failed in spite of the fact that they knew that President Trump would sign the legislation when it came to his desk.
Republicans are impotent because the leadership lacked the force of will to convince House Republicans that the plan they forwarded must pass the House. This was the first part of a three part plan that would accomplish the goal of repealing and replacing Obamacare and accomplish the overall goals of the GOP for a more perfect healthcare system in the United States of America.
Hopefully, the Republican Party leadership will solve the problems revealed by the healthcare debacle. The question is, which GOP will they be?
We the People are depending on you to Make Healthcare in America Great Again!
We the People are depending on you to Make America Great Again!
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One reason that Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory was that they chose the wrong slogan for elimination of Obamacare. The idea of replacement is framed by Democrats as replacing a failed monstrosity with a new replacement monstrosity. As with everything else, Democrats demand a single comprehensive healthcare plan. The Republican failure to have a united front on a clearly articulated Obamacare replacement plan provided fuel for Democrats and the media on both the left and right to oppose Obamacare repeal and replacement. Consequently, doubt and speculation rather than clarity prevailed. Going forward the question remains, “Will Republicans ‘snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?'” Can Republicans solve the nation’s healthcare issues?
We the People need Real Healthcare Solutions Now not Obamacare lite.
In my opinion, the Republican slogan concerning Obamacare should be Real Healthcare Solutions Now. This would place the important issues at the forefront. The slogan, “Real Healthcare Solutions Now, would provide emphasis for a campaign to verbalize exactly how healthcare should be improved and perfected both in relation to the pre-Obamacare healthcare environment and the healthcare failures caused by Obamacare. A monster bill or law covering all the ills of healthcare would be counterproductive and ineffective in solving all the pre-Obamacare and Obamacare caused issues.
Two critical issues that plagued healthcare before Obamacare are transparency within the medical profession in relation to quality and cost of healthcare and tort reform. Providing the people of the United States with high quality, economical healthcare would require that each of these issues be effectively addressed. First, the medical profession should be totally transparent or patients will never have control of their own healthcare. Patients should be able to easily determine and compare the quality and cost of care that they would get from every doctor, analytical procedures, and clinics and hospitals where they will receive care. CBS News reported that clinics, hospitals, and their emergency rooms utilize some specialists and practitioners, like anesthesiologists, that are out of network and not covered by the same insurance plan. The report noted that the patients were not informed about the situation and were billed for the entire cost. Such a situation should be illegal. If a hospital or clinic is covered by your insurance, all of the practitioners at the facility should be part of each plan. The cost and quality of prescription drugs should also be easily comparable for the general public. Unfortunately the medical profession has succeeded in getting state and federal laws that make this type of information difficult for the public to access so that they can ensure the quality and cost-effectiveness of care they receive.
Secondly, tort reform is essential to control healthcare costs. As a former big truck driver, I am a perfect example of this issue. After a fairly severe heart episode, safety laws required a physical annually rather than biannually. At that time, laws specified that the annual physical include a $700 stress test, treadmill. However, my cardiologist would not approve my physical without a $3,500 myocardial stress test where the law simply specifies a treadmill. The difference, charged to insurance, was necessary, from my cardiologist perspective, to mitigate potential litigation if I was subsequently involved in a heart related traffic accident. I also have two all metal artificial hips which, in a small minority of patients, can cause surrounding tissue damage and prosthetic replacement. The daily barrage of attorney advertisements seeking clients for litigation regarding medication side effects and in my case the artificial hip side effects demonstrate the great potential increase in costs associated with litigation. It is not difficult to imagine how much this tort environment increases the cost of healthcare. Healthcare laws should address these issues.
In my opinion, every individual and family in the United States of America should be legally responsible for payment of their healthcare costs. This could be accomplished by my proposal for “The Healthcare Responsibility Act.” Admittedly, it is a wild and crazy idea to think that everybody should be legally responsible for their healthcare and the healthcare of their family. Under this concept, there would be no healthcare insurance mandate; but individuals and families would secure healthcare insurance if they knew that they would be legally responsible for all their healthcare costs whether or not they were responsible enough to secure healthcare insurance and/or fund a healthcare savings account. To ensure their financial future, the young and healthy would secure state or federally defined legal minimum health insurance coverage. This concept would help insure that the insurance provider pools had adequate funding to cover those with pre-existing conditions and children under 26 years of age with their parents insurance.
As a young, 70 year old geezer, my pre-Obamacare healthcare experience was extensive. Before we lost her, my wife and I were never without family healthcare insurance which covered ACL replacements on each of our son’s knees, surgeries on both of my knees and two fingers, my initial heart care, and her cancer care which exceeded $250,000. Subsequently, in New Mexico, while attempting to start a ministry/business, my heart condition precluded private individual healthcare insurance. My premium through the New Mexico Health Insurance Alliance (NMHIA), a state run program for uninsurable entrepreneurs, was nearly $700 a month. Premiums were high because the pool was limited to uninsurable entrepreneurs with businesses in New Mexico, a rather small group. Monthly copays for three branded prescriptions totaled $120, and practitioner copays ranged from $10 to $40 per visit. In my opinion as a citizen, healthcare insurance was my responsibility. Both of my hip replacements, abdominal hernia repair, and prostate cancer surgery were covered under this Insurance totaling less than $1250 in copays. Without this insurance these procedures would have cost between $250,000-$500,000. NMHIA is an example of a state licensed healthcare insurance co-op or pool limited to an individual state resulting in very high premium costs unlike the suggestion for insurance co-operatives discussed below.
The best way to ensure high quality cost effective healthcare is an open, transparent, free market healthcare system. Establishment of the rules and regulations, as well as cost administration, should be a state by state responsibility because the population health status, cost of living, and business costs vary in each state. Suggestions abound to achieve this goal. In the individual and single family healthcare market, allowing healthcare insurance policy coverage without state by state restrictions and allowing every provider to sell policies in all 50 states, is one suggestion. To accomplish this option, the national government would need to mandate uniform regulations among all 50 states. In a mobile society like ours, this idea would also allow complete transportability between states. In addition, allowing individuals and single families to form interstate insurance co-operatives would allow these groups to compete more effectively in the insurance market place. The same rules should also apply to employer provided health insurance which would probably reduce employer costs for large multi-state corporations with high interstate employee transfer rates.
In my opinion, the solutions for our healthcare issues being proposed will never create a truly patient doctor centered free market healthcare system. Currently, each component of healthcare has different rules and regulations. Only a small portion of the total healthcare market was covered by Obamacare. The total healthcare segment of our economy includes employer based healthcare which is over 50% of the market, Veterans Administration healthcare, Medicare and Medicaid, and the uninsured. Each has it problems and patients do not control their care in any. Until problems of the whole system are addressed by a true free market solution , problems will continue.
A healthcare plan that includes the requirement for healthcare cost and quality transparency, tort reform, creation of interstate insurance purchasing power, insurance co-operatives, and legal requirement for individual and family responsibility for all the costs of their healthcare would provide significant steps toward providing healthcare that is patient based rather than more costly, ineffective government mandated healthcare plans. Passage of legislation covering each component of healthcare should result in a more perfect healthcare system than a single healthcare omnibus bill, an Obamacare like disaster. Republicans in Congress and the Trump Administration must quickly settle on a unified, patient centered healthcare plan, or they will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
We the People need
Real Healthcare Solutions Now.
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The 2016 election cycle raised several questions about our political problems and the Constitution.
The 2016 election cycle raised several questions about our political problems and the Constitution. The first two problems are primarily Constitutional issues which influence the political problems facing the United States. The first Constitutional issue is the fact that the Judicial Branch is unchecked in Constitution. In my opinion, the only remedy for this issue is a Constitutional Amendment. The second Constitutional issue is problem of anchor babies born in the United States who have illegal immigrant parents. There is no clear answer to this question. However, Amendment XIV, Section 5, of our Constitution, ratified in 1868, offers the following potential solution: The Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation the provisions of this article. Amendment XIV was clearly written to address all issues related to the citizenship of former slaves following the Civil War. Section 5 gives Congress the power to formulate appropriate legislation in this matter. Unfortunately, the Congress has not even investigated or proposed legislation to solve the issue since it is one of those political problems that could adversely affect elections. Failure to attempt to solve political problems demonstrates to We the People that the system is rigged. Keeping the anchor baby issue alive helps some politicians maintain political power. The issue is not the issue, maintaining political power is the issue for these type politicians. They simply seek to get re-elected. Change is necessary.
Third, the question about the wisdom of forming additional political parties continues to be one of the more personally confusing political problems facing our nation. During the 2016 election campaign disgruntled conservatives in the Republican Party seriously considered forming a third, conservative party. In the United States, we have a constitutional republic not a parliamentarian system like that of Great Britain or Israel. Our Constitution was formulated on the bases of simple majority rule. The only exceptions specified in the Constitution are Presidential veto override by the Congress, treaty ratification in the Senate, and the amendment process outlined in Article V. Consequently, when more than two political parties gain significant electoral participation, the result could be election of a President having a plurality of votes rather than a majority of votes. The situation contradicts one of the major tenants of the republican form of government, majority rule.
For example, President Clinton only garnered approximately 45% of the popular vote both times he was elected. Votes for the two conservatives, President Bush and Ross Perot, totaled at least 55%, in 1992. The same situation occurred in the next presidential election when the Republican candidate was Senator Dole. Again conservatives garnered approximately 55% of the vote. President Clinton claimed a mandate in each election; but he never had a majority vote of the citizens. Of course, our Electoral College system modifies and mitigates the relationship between votes cast by citizens and Electoral College votes. President Clinton did have significant Electoral College victories under our constitutional system in both elections.
If, as a nation, we believe that our national leaders, President, Representatives, and Senators should serve when they are elected by the majority of our citizens, provisions would be required when there are more than two popular political parties. The only way to elect national leaders with a majority of the popular vote would be to require runoff elections when no candidate achieves a simple majority. In the case of the presidential election, this requirement would be state-by-state to maintain our Electoral College system. Such a system would prevent the election of the liberal presidential candidate when the majority of the citizens voted for conservative presidential candidates which occurred in 1992 and 1996. States could follow suit if they chose to do so for state and local elections. Of course, such a remedy would require the long and rancorous procedure of a constitutional amendment. Such a process would also be expensive.
Fourth, one of the more personally vexing political problems facing the nation is the Senate filibuster which violates the democratic republican principle of majority rule. In The Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton explicitly explained the importance of the simple majority as follows:
“(This) contradicts that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.
But this is not all; what at first sight may seem a remedy, is in reality a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision) is in its tendency to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser number. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must in some way or other go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority respecting the best mode of conducting it; the majority in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will over-rule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence tedious delays “ continual negotiation and intrigue “ contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: For upon some occasions, things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended or fatally defeated.
It is not difficult to discover that a principle of this kind gives greater scope to foreign corruption as well as to domestic faction, than that which permits the sense of the majority to decide; though the contrary of this has been presumed.”
In situations where foreign countries, international conglomerates, critical domestic industries like the automotive industry or the financial industries, or those seeking to implement or legislate changes in mores of society, Hamilton continued with some interesting and relevant observations regarding requirements for more than a simple majority to make legislative decisions in The Federalist No. 22:
In such a state of things, (any entity seeking to influence the legislative process) would evidently find it much easier by his bribes and intrigues to tie up the hands of government from making (decisions), where two thirds of all votes were requisite to that object, than where a simple majority would suffice. In the first case he would have to corrupt a smaller number; in the last a greater number. Upon the same principle it would be much easier for a foreign power with which we were at war, to perplex our councils and embarrass our exertions. And in a commercial view we may be subjected to similar inconveniences. A nation, with which we might have a treaty of commerce, could with much greater facility prevent our forming a connection with her competitor in trade; though-such a connection should be ever so beneficial to ourselves.
Evils of this description ought not be so regarded as imaginary. One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford to easy an inlet to foreign (or nefarious) corruption.”
Hamilton’s discussion of the problems arising from decisions requiring more than a simple majority were prophetic. Recent problems preventing congress from completing significant legislation and policy decisions can be directly traced to issues related to actions requiring a 60 percent vote in the Senate rather than a simple, up or down, majority vote. Failure to act shows We the people that political problems prevail in the legislative branch of our government, specifically the Senate filibuster.
The fifth and final group of political problems facing our nation is the manner in which too many of the bills passed in congress link or embed unrelated initiatives and problem solutions into one piece of legislation. The procedure is often done accommodate the opposition to get votes or hide unpopular activities or programs from the voters. The result is often passage of unwanted laws that are not supported by the majority of We the People. Such acts reinforce the perception that the desires of We the People are irrelevant to those we elect to represent us or serve as our President. We the People do not elect national leaders to do what is expedient; we elect our leaders to do what is right; and what we elected them to do.
Each item of legislation should be approved individually by a simple majority. For example, linking bills that the defund Planned Parenthood and fund the Defense Department or emergency defense funding is unconscionable. It ensures failure of both bills or angers We the People. Each should be considered on their own merits and given an up or down simple majority vote. We the People do not appreciate the games played by our elected officials in Washington, DC. DC games demonstrate to We the people that the system is rigged. These types of DC games demonstrate the severity of the political problems plaguing the Legislative Branch of the United States government.
The political problems outlined in this discussion represent a short list of issues that We the People expect our national leaders to address and solve. So, get busy and JUST DO IT!
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