Corker gives gloomy diagnosis for health care overhaul bill
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-11-17 12:45:10 | Word Count: 667
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker had a gloom-and-doom diagnosis for Democrat-sponsored Senate health care reform legislation at a town hall meeting in downtown Elizabethton on Wednesday.
“If Republicans crafted a (health care reform) bill exactly like the bill that is coming before us, word for word ... there wouldn’t be a single Democratic vote for that bill...” the Tennessee Republican told about 100 people inside the Coffee Company. “Many of the people in the Senate are looking at this as having to do with this presidency (of Democrat Barack Obama) and saving this presidency instead of realizing the basic fundamentals of this bill are wrong. ... I believe this president truly believes government can solve most all problems. That’s a place I’m not comfortable with at all.”
[ advertisement ]
Now that the House has passed one health care reform measure with a government-run public health plan, at least two other proposals are being debated in the Senate.
One idea floated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada would allow states to “opt out” of a government-run health plan.
As he was leaving to go to another town hall meeting in Mountain City, Corker said Reid is using the idea “to count votes” in the Senate.
“He’s trying to figure out about the public option what gets people in or loses votes. ... He’s doing this literally behind closed doors,” Corker said of Reid.
A $1 trillion Senate Finance Committee bill calls for creating state health exchanges and imposing an excise tax on people without essential health benefits coverage, and on employers who fail to meet health insurance coverage requirements for full-time employees.
Corker pointed out flaws in each measure and told the crowd he would not vote for federally funded abortions or a government-run health plan “in any form.”
Unfunded Medicaid costs total $735 million in the Senate Finance bill and $1.35 billion under the House bill, Corker noted.
Corker said the Senate Finance bill also seeks to take more than $400 billion out of Medicare, the federal health care program for seniors, by 2017.
He also pointed to a Blue Cross/Blue Shield-sponsored study saying insurance rates would be driven up 60 percent within five years under the Senate Finance bill.
Corker, instead, advocated tort reform, across-the-border competition among insurance companies, and tax incentives for those buying health insurance.
“The fact that an individual who buys health insurance with their own dollars and doesn’t get it from their company and has to pay for health insurance with after-tax dollars, but if you work at a company you get it with pre-tax dollars, that is something we should have fixed a long time ago,” Corker said.
Corker has done town hall meetings on health care reform in more than 30 counties, and did three in Northeast Tennessee on Wednesday.
“These town hall meetings used to be hard to get people to come to,” Corker said as he looked out at a filled dining room. “Our country has awakened, if you will. ... I really do believe the reason many of you are coming out ... is you feel like our government is out of control.
“I believe we are experiencing in Washington, and we have been for some time ... I think this is the most selfish generation of political leadership that our country has ever seen.”
That remark won applause, but Corker said he noticed people started looking uncomfortable when he said Republican lawmakers added $8 trillion to the national debt after establishing a Medicare drug benefit in 2003.
“I think what we’re getting ready to do with health care is even worse,” Corker said.
