Good News: The Republican Health Care Bill Failed
April 5th, 2017 // 7:42 am @ Oliver DeMille
“Regular people were cheering me on.
Elites were shouting me down.
I knew I was on to something.”
—Daniel Pink
The Plan vs the Goal
Obamacare is a disaster. Rising premiums, decreasing quality of care, overreaching regulatory coercion, major expense increases to taxpayers, government red tape that is hurting the economy—and will do even more damage when new mandates kick in this fall. None of these are helpful.
But as problematic as Obamacare is, the last thing we need right now is another bad health care law, one steeped in government regulations, confusing, and hastily thrown together—leaving executive branch bureaucrats to fill in the blanks.
The Freedom Caucus was right. We don’t need another bad healthcare law. Such a result would be a disaster for conservatism, and a disaster for the entire nation and our economy.
The new healthcare proposal was significantly better than Obamacare. But this shouldn’t be our standard for something so important. Yes, Republicans promised to fix healthcare, but doing so piecemeal and hurriedly—mainly to score political points—isn’t the right approach. The goal should be an effective, well-conceived healthcare system that really works.
The Freedom Path
Leaving so many things out of the bill, to be later decided by the implementing agencies, means that when the other party wins an election, it can significantly restructure the whole healthcare sector without any say from Congress. This approach creates uncertainty, meaning that health/insurance companies and businesses won’t fully invest in lasting solutions. Not a good start to important legislation.
We need to get this right. And that means the legislative branch should do what it does best: think through every conceivable possibility, argue the varying sides of the issue, and draft a plan that has broad and deep support. Ramming something through more quickly might impress the voters, but that only lasts if the product is effective and sustainable.
Congress has time. Not a lot, but enough. It needs to work on this vigorously until it gets done—but do it right.
On an even larger scale, the initial failure of this bill to even come up for a vote may indicate of a larger victory for the American people: the rebirth of the House of Representatives.
For years the House has played bush-league ball, afraid to take on the major league challenge of the White House–or ineffective when it tried. The media has repeatedly put pressure on the House any time it attempted to use the purse strings (it’s most important Constitutional check on the Executive Branch), and, all too often, the House has caved.
But this time, when the opponent wasn’t the media but rather the White House and the House leadership, the supporters of freedom held firm and refused to allow a bill that would have failed to truly fix the problem. That’s a victory, no matter how the media or the White House spins it.
Purpose and Leadership
It raises serious concerns, such as 1) Why can the House stand against the President, but not against the media or the Court?, and 2) Why is the House leadership so determined to fight against real change?
But even with these problems, it’s nice to see the House reasserting itself in national leadership. Remember: the framers made the House the true arm of the people on the federal level. When the House doesn’t stand up against usurpations by the Executive Branch (as well as against the Senate, the Court, and in the face of an antagonistic media), the whole nation is drastically weakened.
That said, this is only a small victory. It remains to be seen whether this spark of House leadership will be fleeting or something more permanent. It is also unclear whether the House will now continue to lead on the issue of Health Care; it defeated one bad plan, but will it go on to effectively pass a good plan? That’s the real test.
If it does, we may be at the cusp of a new era of leadership from the House. If not, it will emerge from this year’s failures weaker than ever.
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