Congressman Mike Pence appeared on "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" alongside Rep. Van Hollen to discuss yesterday's vote on the Pelosi health care plan and the implications for 2010:
Excerpts:
Host Chris Wallace: Congressman Pence, what's the message from last night and what about those Democrats from conservative districts who ended up voting for the bill? Are you going to make them pay in the next election?
Rep. Mike Pence: Chris, I think the message from last night is that Democrats didn't get the message in August or last Tuesday. I think from this past summer we saw the American people express overwhelming opposition to a government takeover of health care. They attended town hall meetings and rallies across the country, and then this last Tuesday, the historic reversals that Democrats saw in just twelve months in New Jersey and Virginia. Again, was an effort by the American people to send a message to this party that they are tired of the borrowing, the spending, the bailouts, the takeovers. But last night, on a narrow partisan vote, the Democrats put their liberal big-government agenda ahead of the American people.
*** Rep. Pence: I think the American people are deeply frustrated with a liberal establishment in Washington D.C. that is ignoring their will. Nancy Pelosi, last night said, that they were "answering the call of history." I got to tell you, if Democrats keep ignoring the American people, their party is going to be history in about a year.
*** Rep. Pence: The Democrats took runaway federal spending under Republican control and put it on steroids. The American people are tired of the borrowing, the spending, the bailouts, the takeovers.
*** Wallace: Congressman Pence, hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes, new mandates on small business, is that what you want when you got 10.2 percent unemployment?
Rep. Pence: Well the truth is, when you're in a hole, Chris, the first rule is: stop digging. Chris [Van Hollen] is absolutely right, this economy was in shambles when this president came to power. They passed a so-called "stimulus" bill that was nothing more than a liberal wish list of spending priorities, that has now taken us from 7.5 percent unemployment to a heart-breaking 10.2 percent unemployment nationally. But the Democrats in Washington are still, again, ignoring the American people. They are unwilling to reconsider this approach. They think that we can borrow, spend and bail our way back to a growing economy. On top of this, they drop a massive national energy tax they pass along party lines.
But to your point, $729 billion in tax increases. Congressman Boren, one of his Democrat colleagues said, "The last thing you do in a recession is raise taxes and that's just what this health care bill does." It was the wrong thing to do and the American people know it.
WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence released the following statement today regarding the shootings that occurred at Fort Hood yesterday:
"Yesterday our nation was rocked with the news that a lone gunman opened fire at Fort Hood, killing at least 13 and wounding dozens more.
"Sometimes our heroes fall on foreign soil and sometimes they come home and fall, but we honor their service and sacrifice all the same. Our thoughts and prayers are with the wounded, their families and those who grieve this morning, and we mourn with those who lost loved ones in yesterday's senseless violence."
Congressman Mike Pence appeared on the FOX News program "On The Record" with Greta Van Susteren to discuss the House Republican health care alternative:
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: The GOP has hammered the House Democrats' health care bill, and critics have fired back at Republicans, Oh, yes? Do you have a better idea? Well, today House Republicans say they do. They officially released the Republican health care reform bill. So what's it all about?
Republican congressman Mike Pence joins us. Good evening, sir.
REP. MIKE PENCE, R - IND.: Good evening, Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: So what is the Republican health care reform bill, and how is it different than what the Democrats are proposing?
PENCE: Well, the Democrat bill, all 1,990 pages of it, with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes and mandates and bureaucracy, is really, we believe, a government takeover of health care that's driving toward their goal of what they call universal coverage.
Republicans believe we've listened to the American people and heard that the real concern among the American people is the cost of health insurance. And so the bill that's on line today -- there's a one-sheet version of it, or you can read all 219 pages, Greta. What we do is we allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines. We allow groups of employers to purchase health insurance on a nationwide basis, the way the big corporations can. We pass medial malpractice reform to lower the cost of health care, end defensive medicine and junk lawsuits. And then we use those savings to strengthen those insurance funds at the state level that will cover preexisting conditions for Americans. And so our bill is intended to lower the cost of health insurance, rather than growing the size of government, and we think it's going to resonate with millions of Americans.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, let me start first with the medical malpractice reform. In your particular bill, are you likewise limiting the legal fees on both the plaintiffs' lawyers and the defense lawyers? Because I don't think there's any possible way that you can have true reform unless you put the lid on both. Typically, there's only a lid put on one side. Do you put it on both sides?
PENCE: Well, we're talking in the bill -- you can look at the details with your extensive legal background. We're talking in the bill about capping punitive damages. When you look at theses massive jury awards in medical malpractice cases, the hundreds of millions of dollars in punitive damages, that's what's driving up people's health insurance premiums. And the doctors I talk to back in Indiana tell me that it's -- it's essentially the fear of litigation that causes many doctors to prescribe, you know, more tests and more treatments than they believe are absolutely necessary. It's called "defensive medicine."
So yes, we're advocating those kind of caps, Greta, but it's all, we believe, a part of a long-term strategy to lower the cost of health care, lower the cost of health insurance, and again, use those savings to cover preexisting conditions in the state funds that exist today.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, my guess is, though, the punitive damages -- that scares doctors and they may do defensive medicine as a result, but that in reality, that punitive damages are rarely awarded, that the bigger problem is -- in some ways, is that the inability of the two sides to really look at a problem and see if it should be resolved -- and I really think that if you do any reform, you got to put the cap on lawyers for sides so you make them sit down and evaluate fairly and stop scaring the doctors.
PENCE: Well, you know, it's a terrific point, and it's one of the deficiencies of the Pelosi health care bill, Greta, is that they actually make reference to medical malpractice reform. They create some state grants. But then they rule out states like Indiana or California that already have caps in medical malpractice cases. I mean, really -- it really works a hardship on states that have tried to bring about reasonable litigation reform in the area of the practice of medicine. And so they just talk a little about it. They nod at it.
One of the centerpieces of the Republican alternative, which you can read all about it, Healthcare.gop.gov, is medical malpractice reform, along with letting people purchase insurance all across this country.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, what's your cost? And will this -- and how many more Americans do you anticipate being covered by your Republican proposal?
PENCE: Well, as I stand here with you right now, I'm not sure the CBO cost is yet out, but we'll be talking about that. I think it's going to be a very pleasant surprise for Americans that are troubled about this $1.3 trillion government takeover that Democrats are moving through the House. I think the CBO number is going to be rather impressive. And I won't preempt that. I'll let the Congressional Budget Office describe that for you. But your second question was, again?
VAN SUSTEREN: How many people do you expect to be covered, how many more people, with your...
PENCE: Right. Right. Thank you for that. You know, Democrats are trying to get at this business of universal coverage through mandates, through bureaucracies, through taxing people that don't purchase health insurance and creating a new government-run insurance plan. We believe you get at the coverage issue by lowering the cost of health insurance. I don't know too many small business owners back in Indiana that don't want to offer health insurance for their employees. They just can't afford it.
So Republicans, by focusing on the cost of health insurance, believe that we are going to take our country in the direction where -- where we also deal with the tens of millions of people that -- that -- and employers that struggle with providing insurance.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, here's a novel idea. Have you marched your bill up to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to have her take a look at it? She may see things that she finds appealing, or you might find some of her ideas appealing. Can that be done? Can you -- can you talk a little bit between the two sides?
PENCE: You know, members of Congress, despite what it looks like on television, actually talk across the aisle all the time. And I believe it would be possible for us to move in the direction of the kind of health care reform that Republicans are talking about. I think Senator Ron Wyden over here on the Senate side actually has a bill that allows people to purchase health insurance across state lines.
But it's all going to have to begin with stopping this freight train of big government that is the Pelosi health care bill. We've got to stop this bill in its tracks. Then I think this conversations can begin, and we can begin to work together in a way that, on an incremental basis, pursues the kind of reforms that'll really lower the cost of health insurance for the American people without permanently growing the size of government.
"Well Republicans believe we listened to the American people that don't want a government takeover of health care, but they do want Congress to act to lower the cost of health insurance and lower the cost of health care in the long-term. We think we do that by allowing Americans to purchase health insurance the way you buy car insurance, across state lines. Also allow groups of businesses in the city and on the farm to create national insurance risk pools and buy insurance for their employees the way that major corporations can but it today.
"You put in medical malpractice reforms on a nationwide basis so nationwide caps will reign in some of these runaway massive law suits that drive defensive medicine and drive up the cost of premiums. And then you use those savings, lastly, to strengthen the existing state funds and insurance programs that cover people with preexisting conditions. We believe we can do that all in a fiscally responsible way without mandates, bureaucracy, a government takeover, or government run insurance."
----
"I've debated colleagues on this on the airwaves, on the floor, and in private over it. There's a lot of talk about, you know, if you allowed Americans to purchase health insurance as individuals or businesses across state lines, that I've heard the word ‘race to the bottom,' but you know, I think with extraordinary increase in the cost of health insurance premiums, there's a lot of Americans, a lot of small businesses out there that would like to race to the bottom of cost. And I think that's the fundamental difference between the approach between the Democratic majority and the White House and the Republicans' approach.
"They're launching this massive expansion of government bureaucracy, taxes, and mandates to achieve what they call universal coverage, which is their every right to pursue. We believe the American people are most concerned about the cost of health insurance, the cost of health care, and so our plans are designed to bring down the cost using the power of the individual as you described."
----
"Yeah, right, and you got them in there at the end. The insurance companies, you know, and state governments, you know, we've had over the last 100 years state governments and legislatures control what insurance is offered. They regulate the insurance companies within those individual states, and they provide a barrier. It really is odd to think that someone that lives across the river in New Jersey can't go online or pick up the phone and call and insurance company in New York City and buy insurance there. A big corporation can, but an individual can't.
"We really do believe, and I want to give the president a bit of rhetorical credit here, from very early on President Obama has said we need to bring competition into the system and more choice. Well our proposal, and there's a one-page summary online right now, we'll have our bill out online in the coming hours, Dylan, for people to look at line by line, but our bill really is about that idea, not with a so-called government insurance option or bureaucracy, but allow more competition between the 1,300 insurance companies that exist today across the country."
Yesterday the Associated press reported the total cost of Speaker Pelosi's health care bill will cost Americans $1.2 trillion:
House health bill totals $1.2 trillion
By DAVID ESPO (AP)
November 2, 2009
WASHINGTON - The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.
While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.
Many of the additions are designed to improve benefits or ease access to coverage in government programs. The officials who provided overall cost estimates did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred repeatedly to the bill's net cost of $894 billion over a decade for coverage.
Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.
In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.
Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level-for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.
•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run "exchanges" where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level-that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016-could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.
At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this "firewall"-which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on "free" health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington. Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.
• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare-now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.
Even though the House will assume 91% of the "matching rate" for this joint state-federal program-up from today's 57%-governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington's budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.
• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point "surcharge" on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire-not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won't have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.
This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn't indexed for inflation. Yet it still won't be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they'll claim the deficits that they created made them do it. Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don't offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers' premiums, which eat into wages. Such "play or pay" taxes always become "pay or pay" and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.
Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won't buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.
• The insurance takeover. A new "health choices commissioner" will decide what counts as "essential benefits," which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.
The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.
The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as "private" health insurance.
***
All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.
As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable-especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.
Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of "change," but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.
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