Ovide Lamontagne: Hodes ignores the real health care reforms America needs

Guest post by Ovide Lamontagne

Printed by the Union Leader, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009

In a column in the Nov. 29 New Hampshire Sunday News, Rep. Paul Hodes defends and celebrates his vote in favor of the Nancy Pelosi health care bill. His column is the best example yet of how Washington is broken.

Hodes claims that the Pelosi bill "won’t add one dime to the federal deficit." Yet according to the independent Congressional Budget Office, the Pelosi bill he supports will cost in excess of $1 trillion over 10 years. A 2,000-plus page bill purporting to take over health care won’t add a dime to the national debt? Don’t bet on it. And how is it being funded if not by debt? Yes, you are right: higher taxes for businesses and individuals.   Hodes’ half-truths and misstatements along with his vote are simple examples of why the campaign for our next U.S. senator will offer a clear choice between Washington and New Hampshire values in solving our nation’s problems.

Hodes claims the Pelosi health care bill he voted for increases "competition." What he glosses over is that the new competitor is the federal government itself through a "public option." New Hampshire citizens know better. Government cannot and should not act as an insurance carrier "competing" in the insurance markets.  The only justification is the Washington liberals’ scheme of trying to enact a single-payer system, which Americans roundly and rightly reject. Make no mistake about it, the public option in the Pelosi-Hodes health care bill will bring us into a government-run single-payer system in very short order.

There is a better way. We need a government "do over," not a takeover of health care. The maze of rules and regulations designed to administer the Medicare and Medicaid programs have distorted the private health care delivery and insurance systems. These rules should be revamped, reduced and streamlined to pay for quality, not quantity, of health care; to bundle payments to providers based on episodes of care, not a myriad of isolated and discrete billing transactions; and to encourage providers and insurers to align their local and regional health care assets to enhance efficiencies, lower costs and improve quality — not prohibit that.  In other words, government should get out of the way of health care professionals who, left to their initiative, will do a far better job of addressing shortcomings in the health care delivery system. Paul Hodes and the liberals in Washington always think big government knows best, and they are wrong.

These initiatives and the even simpler steps of allowing…

…insurance companies to sell across state lines (while permitting domestic and regional carriers to offer the same plans as national companies and letting individuals and employers choose the plan that best meets their needs) and incentivizing states to enact meaningful tort-reform laws will go a long way to improving our health care system.  These measures are nowhere to be found in the health care bill Paul Hodes voted for. In the end, any health care reform bill should provide maximum flexibility to state and local health care planners to design targeted fixes to increase access to and the quality of health care provided through what is essentially a locally delivered and administered health care system without adding to our national debt. This is what will truly help working families.

Hodes rails against "profits" by large insurance companies and claims that the Pelosi bill he voted for somehow addresses this. What he doesn’t know, or fails to disclose, is that more than 60 percent of health insurance plans with 100,000 or more enrollees are offered by nonprofit insurance carriers. Hodes needs to stop the fear-mongering and pandering to special interests and start working on real market-based solutions for working families.

Just this summer, Paul Hodes called New Hampshire citizens who opposed HB 3200 — the first Pelosi health care bill — members of the "Flat Earth Society." He still owes us an apology, but voting for the latest Pelosi health care bill was not it.