Time to Get Tough (16 page)

Still, I think we've got an even chance that the Supreme Court may strike down Obamacare's so-called “individual mandate” to buy health insurance. If that happens, even Obama's supporters concede it will all but kill Obamacare, because the whole thing hinges on the government forcing everyone to buy insurance whether they want to or not. But it's anyone's guess if the Supreme Court will rule properly.

Regardless of what happens in the Supreme Court, and even if we elect a real president who will get tough and repeal Obamacare, we still need a plan to bring down health-care costs and make health-care insurance more affordable for everyone. It starts with increasing competition between insurance companies. Competition makes everything better and more affordable. When I build a building, I let various builders and architects compete for the contract. Why? Because it sharpens their game, makes them bid competitively on price, and encourages them to give me the best quality product possible. That's true for any service or product. That's why Americans need more options when it comes to purchasing health-care insurance.

One way to infuse more competition into the market is to let citizens purchase health-care plans across state lines. Health-care costs vary drastically from state to state. For example, a 25-year-old in California can buy an HMO plan that costs him $260 a month. But for a New Yorker to buy a similar plan with equivalent benefits, it will cost him $1,228 a month.
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Why not allow people to buy health insurance across state lines and make companies compete to offer the best plans at the best rates?

This could be easily accomplished if Congress got some guts and did the right thing. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress control over interstate commerce. But for whatever reason, the Congress has never exercised this power regarding health insurance. Bills for interstate insurance compacts have been proposed for over six years. As usual, though, the politicians in Washington have done nothing about it. They need to. As former Florida
Congressman Thomas Feeney points out, creating a national market for health-care plans would help bring costs down for lower-income Americans—such as those 19- to 29-year-olds without coverage—and give them more affordable options.
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The reason prices vary so much from state to state is because states differ wildly on the kinds of mandates they require in their coverage plans. As Devon Herrick, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, puts it: “If consumers do not want expensive ‘Cadillac' health plans that pay for acupuncture, fertility treatments or hairpieces, they could buy from insurers in a state that does not mandate such benefits.”
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Increasing competition is common sense. We need to pass laws that encourage it.

The other way we can drive down costs is by recognizing that doctors today are practicing “defensive medicine.” In other words, doctors often order unnecessary tests and procedures to avoid being sued. Pricewaterhouse Coopers did a study to see how much defensive medicine adds to overall medical costs. They found that this phenomenon accounts for at least 10 percent of all medical costs.
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That's huge.

It's not hard to understand why doctors engage in defensive medicine. Just look at disgraced Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards. In his former life, Edwards was a world-class ambulance chaser. In just twelve years, Edwards won $175 million in malpractice judgments by suing doctors, insurance companies, and hospitals for causing infant cerebral palsy. And this despite the fact that the American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists has stated that the “vast majority” of cerebral palsy cases have nothing to do with the way a baby is delivered.
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It's just one more example of what a disgraceful human being John Edwards is.

“The courts are clogged up with these cases,” says Dr. Cecil Wilson of the American Medical Association. “Physicians are afraid of being hauled into court and as a result order tests they ordinarily would not order.”
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With sleazy characters like Edwards lurking around every hospital corner, it's no wonder doctors feel forced to add all those expensive tests to protect themselves. Doing so, however, jacks up our health-care costs by at least 10 percent. That's why we need serious tort reform. Specifically, we need to cap damages for so-called “pain and suffering” at $100,000. We also need “loser pays” laws that make the loser pay the legal bills of the winner if the charges are deemed baseless—a system followed by almost all other western democracies. This will help cut down on frivolous suits that artificially raise health-care costs and clog up our courts. The state of Texas recently passed loser pays legislation. Other states should do the same.

There's a reason most Americans oppose Obamacare: it's a total disaster. Barack Obama has put us so deep in the debt hole that America can't afford another one of his $2 trillion spending programs. Obamacare is already making health-care costs rise, and the thing hasn't even gone into full effect yet. Worse, it's absolutely slaughtering jobs. No businessperson with a brain would consider serious expansion with this regulatory nightmare hanging over them. Whether through a Supreme Court ruling or a presidential election, America must repeal Obamacare once and for all.

Destroying the world's finest health-care system so that Obama can have his socialized medicine program is reckless and foolish. The proper way to bring the cost of health-care down is to make insurance companies compete nationally and get defensive medicine under control through serious tort reform that includes loser pays provisions.

We need a president who will get tough and repeal Obamacare on day one. When they do, they will have accomplished more with one stroke of the pen than Obama has accomplished in his abysmal presidency. 2012 can't come soon enough.

 

 

 

 

I
llegal immigration is a wrecking ball aimed at U.S. taxpayers. Washington needs to get tough and fight for “We the People,” not for the special interests who want cheap labor and a minority voting bloc. Every year taxpayers are getting stuck with a $113 billion bill to pay for the costs of illegal immigration.
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That's a bill we can't afford and wouldn't have to pay if people in Washington did their jobs and upheld our nation's laws.

Too many Republicans in Washington turn a blind eye to illegal immigration because some of their business supporters want artificially cheap labor. Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, look on illegal immigrants
as another potential Democrat voting bloc eager for their big government agenda of welfare handouts, class warfare, and “affirmative action.” What do taxpayers get? They get the shaft.

Both sides need to grow up and put America's interests first—and that means doing what's right for our economy, our national security, and our public safety. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) 2011 report, America's prisons house 351,000 criminal aliens who committed a crime
after
having already broken the law by entering America illegally. Making taxpayers pay for 351,000 criminals who should never have been here in the first place is ridiculous. The GAO says that the annual price tag to incarcerate these thugs is $1.1 billion. And get this: criminal aliens have an
average
of seven arrests.
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That's at least seven crimes committed against American citizens by each of these criminals who should never have been allowed across our borders.

According to the
New York Times
, one out of every three federal prison inmates is a Latino, and three quarters of these are here illegally.
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As one Phoenix, Arizona, assistant federal defender put it, “I have Anglo and Native American clients who tell me about being the only non-Spanish speaker in their pod. Ten years ago, it just wasn't that way.... A lot of times the guards don't speak the language. How do you safely guard people who may not understand your orders?”
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A better question is why should we have to guard them at all? Have we suddenly become an annex of Mexico's prison system? If so, Mexico should pay for it. I actually have a theory that Mexico is sending their absolute worst, possibly including prisoners, in
order for us to bear the cost, both financial and social. This would account for the fact that there is so much crime and violence.

We shouldn't want lawbreakers as citizens—and that's what illegal immigrants are by definition: lawbreakers. Yes, America is a nation of immigrants, but that doesn't mean we have to offer citizenship to everyone who crosses our borders. I'd guess just about every poor person in the world wants to come here. Who wouldn't want to come to the greatest nation on earth? But that obviously is crazy. What is not crazy is having an immigration policy where we decide which potential immigrants are entitled to citizenship, where we choose the best and most productive people who want to come here for that honor. We should not let ourselves become the dumping ground for other countries' undesirables. Instead we should roll out a welcome mat only to those who can make our country better—and illegal immigrant criminals don't do that.

The illegal immigrant crime problem is far more serious and threatening than most people understand. Along our southern border, our citizens, police, and border patrol agents are being attacked with increasing brutality and regularity. Did you know that three border patrol agents are assaulted every day along America's southern border? And it's getting worse. According to the Justice Department, assaults against U.S. border patrol agents have spiked 46 percent.
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Then there is the “most dangerous gang in the world,” the Mara Salvatrucha, more commonly known as the MS-13 gang. The gang, comprised mostly of Central American immigrants, is known for its extreme viciousness. Besides smuggling (and abusing) illegal immigrants into the United States, MS-13 might be conspiring with terrorists. Al Qaeda is always
looking for a way to smuggle terrorists into our country, and American officials know that a top al Qaeda lieutenant (who had also been in Canada seeking nuclear material for a so-called “dirty bomb”) met with leaders of MS-13 about ways to infiltrate America through our border with Mexico.
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Intelligence agencies have also spotted several known members of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab Islamic terror group in Mexico and have warned that they are planning to penetrate the United States.
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MS-13 represents a lethal threat to both our citizens and illegal immigrants. The gang brags that they are “immigrant hunters.” They lie in wait at immigration checkpoints knowing that illegals will jump off trains. MS-13 then holds the stranded illegal aliens for ransom. With 22,000 illegal immigrant kidnappings occurring each year, it's estimated that gangs like MS-13 could be raking in upwards of $50 million annually.
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Obviously not all illegal immigrants are members of violent gangs. Many aliens are just seeking a better life for their families. Who could fault them? But again, we cannot become a repository for all the poor and desperate people of the world. For America to change its culture and way of life, to give away American jobs at a time of high unemployment to non-citizens who have broken the law to come here, is to commit economic and cultural suicide.

And not enforcing our laws leads directly to the deaths of American citizens. Here is a poignant example. In 2010, Carlos Montano, an illegal immigrant, killed a 66-year-old nun, Sister Denise Mosier, and critically injured two others when Montano was driving drunk in a Virginia suburb. Incredibly, Carlos Montano had been arrested not once but twice before on drunk-driving charges and had other traffic-related arrests. But when
Montano got handed off to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, the Department of Homeland Security inexplicably let Montano walk. “We handed him over to the feds assuming he would be deported,” said Corey Steward, chairman of the Prince William County's Board of Supervisors. “But instead federal authorities released him back into the neighborhood and he killed a nun. . . . Blood is on the hands of Congress for not properly funding immigration enforcement.”
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The needless death of Sister Denise Mosier is hardly an isolated case. There are countless stories of driving fatalities and serious injuries by people who should not have been on American roads in the first place. When liberals like Barack Obama hear tragic stories like that of Sister Mosier, they come back with, “Yes, and that's precisely why we should grant ‘undocumented workers'”—that's illegals to you and me—“driver's licenses and teach them the rules of our roads!” It's a level of cluelessness that borders on delusion.