Coburn’s Healthcare Blueprint

The Wall Street journal is reporting on Tom Coburn’s efforts for a health care solution that doesn’t put us all in danger of Nanny State SIDS.

That debate is about the future of health-care reform, and it got some momentum this week when Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn released a big-ideas blueprint for restructuring the entire health-care system–the tax code, Medicare, tort liability, insurance laws–along free-market lines. Dr. Coburn’s plan builds on the White House’s own bold proposal in January to revamp tax laws so as to put consumers back in control of their health-care decisions. Both plans are about fundamental, bottom-up health-care reforms, cast in the language of markets, consumers and individual control.

Coburn’s Senate page has this to say about the plan:

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK), a practicing physician and member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), today introduced the “Universal Health Care Choice and Access Act,” a comprehensive health care reform plan. U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), who also is a member of the HELP committee, joined Dr. Coburn as an original co-sponsor.

…

“Government-run, ‘Big Brother’ health care plans that some politicians are vowing to revive would drive-up tax rates, strangle our economy and deprive the most vulnerable individuals in society of basic health coverage. The seductive rhetoric behind ‘Big Brother’ health care hides the fact that socialized systems stay afloat by rationing care and letting people die before their time. In the United Kingdom, for example, cancer patients sometimes have to wait a year between their diagnosis and first chemotherapy treatment. That approach to health care is unconscionable,” Dr. Coburn said.

Provisions include encouraging prevention, shifting tax breaks towards individuals, creating a national market for health insurance so that consumers aren’t limited to local choices, clarifying the nature of health care costs, reforms portions of Medicare and provides states incentive to make Medicare less restrictive.

That last portion is extremely important. One massive HillaryCare program for the entire nation threatens all sorts of economic disruption. But the whole point of a multi-state nation with a limited national government was to allow for 50 labs where these ideas could be worked out and compete with each other. If HillaryCare is going to work so well, let’s let Minnesota, Iowa, and New Mexico prove it first. Once the national bureaucracy is created, any efforts to reform it will be a 50+ year effort of untold energy and political capital, and we’ve already got other problems that need our collective attention.

Keep up the good work Senator.

(kudos to Commonwealth Foundation’s Policy Blog for the find)

$24 billion worth of pork

In 2006, a lot of Freshman Democrats got elected on the promise that they were actually conservatives. Today they are expected to vote on an Iraq war supplemental that is filled with billions in pork projects. The Club for Growth is doing it’s job by targeting freshman who promised fiscal responsibility on the campaign trail.

The Club for Growth PAC denounced the Democratic House leadership for stuffing the Iraq war supplemental bill with $24 billion in outrageous pork projects and called upon the following Democratic freshmen to live up to their campaign pledges to restore fiscal responsibility to Congress and cut pork.

Nancy Boyda from Kansas, Heath Schuler from North Carolina, Nick Lampson from Texas, Tim Mahoney from Florida, and Harry Mitchell from Arizona are all being singled out by the Club for Growth. Follow the link below for details.

Via Press Release from The Club For Growth blog)

ABC on How to Edit a Blog

In an entry about Edward’s supposedly energy efficient home, Jake Tapper at the Political Radar gave the world a small glimpse of how the old media does blogging.

At the top of the entry was a paragraph stating that the post was almost ready for clearance, and referenced the final paragraph (reprinted below) approvingly, saying that it sounded bloggish. Now, of course, said editorial paragraph is gone (you’ll have to take my word for it, sadly), but I’m glad to report that the final bloggish paragraph remains.

ABC News cannot confirm, however, whether or not the Edwards campaign’s hotel intends to leave the lights on for them.

Why am I posting this? Am I making fun of ABC? Not really, my own editorial process consists of running my posts past my stuffed bear. I just thought a little insider blogging critique would be bloggish.

If you can only say nice things…

Don’t say anything at all, apparently.

On Leno last night, Biden ducked a chance to explain his prior code-word assualt on Sen. Barack Obama, responding to Jay’s offer with “Look, you can talk all you want about Obama. I’m not saying a word.” Probably a wise choice.

Leno thoughtfully closed the night with “Senator, thank you for coming on. You were quite articulate.”

(Via ABC’s Political Radar)

Dr. Coburn On 20/20 tonight

Meet Dr. No

And now in Washington, they call him “Dr. No.”

Dr. No loses a lot of his battles, like his fight to keep Congress from giving $500 million of your money to military manufacturer Northrop Grumman after its ships were damaged in Hurricane Katrina.

“Yeah, I lost that one,” said Coburn. “But it’s wrong.”

Lately he’s been winning more. Congress has now gotten rid of about $16 billion worth of earmarks.

“We’re winning,” said Coburn.

Watch it tonight on ABC, 10pm EDT.

Mr. Valerie Plame, timeline

What did Joe Wilson know and when did he know it? As most honest participants suspect, his knowledge changed in a remarkably non-linear fashion. After having tea with persons of interest in Niger, he seemed to know little. After Bush’s SOTU in 2003, he seemed to know little. After certain documents were outed as forgeries, Wilson was clueless. 5 months after the SOTU when he began advising John Kerry’s campaign, was on a panel for democrats, and saw a Kerry administration post become a possibility, he suddenly knew a whole lot that wasn’t so, and he told everyone whose ear he could grab, probably by leveraging his wife’s credibility.

Sweetness and Light breaks it down from Bush’s 2003 SOTU to present, accounting for what now know from the US Senate Select Committee on Inteligence.

So why did we have a 3 year witch hunt, in the press, the dhimmocratic party, and finally in the US attorney’s office to catch a guy for misremembering several year old details? We know Fitzgerald knew the source of the press leak when he started his investigation, and that he apparently spent 41 months and millions of taxpayers dollars, not to mention valuable US attorney time that could have been spent investigating voter fraud. Because Joe Wilson, a man normally happy to live off his wife’s hand-me-downs, got ambitious. And while the president was setting aside legacy ambition, losing popularlity to manufactured scandals in order to keep fighting a noble war to bring liberty to the midst of tyranny and change the course of history, Joe Wilson was padding his resume to kiss up to a future boss.

After 3 years of relentless whining, Americans have more or less come to the conclusion that no one could have debassed himself so unless he was right, and the polls have reflected their weariness. Americans overestimated Wilson’s pride. When brutal regimes and and heavy American sacrifices cannot wear down the will of the American people, the Dhimmicratic party reports for duty.

There’s an episode of Fraiser where Bulldog falls for Roz, and takes a job babysitting for her so he can scare her dates off. While she’s out of the room, Bulldog tells one of her dates to take a hike, and then to prove his resolve, grabs his own thumb and folds it gruetesquely backwards. “If that’s what I’ll do to myself, imagine what I’ll do to you.” As 2008 looms, the possibility of a Dhimmicrat in the White grows stronger. Whoever it is, they’ll need a Secretary of State. And they won’t have forgotten the vital role Wilson played in helping the sound an American retreat. If he takes office, remember how he debassed himself these past few years, and if he’ll do that to himself, imagine what he’ll do to America.

(kudos to Sweetness and Light)