When Idealism hurts your own constituency…
The conservative idealism behind a free market regulating itself and a minimalist government is a strong movement, especially in Indiana where change is feared and the woods are full of members of the John Birch Society.
But when one-in-six people in your congressional district do not have health insurance (and therefore health care) available to them, I'd consider that a crisis. The National Review put together statistics of where the uninsured live and compared that to who is representing them in congress. So today I'm going to pick on Representative Mark Souder, from the far north-east corner of Indiana. What isn't rural in that area is related to heavy manufacturing, with a notable exception to some financial services and a large GTE Verizon data center.
17% of his district has no health insurance, per the 2008 US Census. That's the highest percentage of uninsured in Indiana. As a textbook Republican (one who stood-by President Bush and Governor Daniels through thick and thin) Souder is vehemently opposed to the health care reforms currently proposed in congress. If we were to say he was a true conservative ideologue and afraid of government spending when it comes to health care we could fault him for his deficit spending during the Iraq war, but I don't think he is claiming that. He's simply another party-line Republican, and in this case ignoring the plight of 17% of the people in his district in order to retain the appearance of being a conservative.
The health care bill that came out of the senate finance committee could have been written by the health-care lobby itself. It stipulated that all citizens must purchase private insurance (much like what goes on in Germany's health care system.) It nixed the tenuous previous-conditions exemptions and I think it fixed cross-state-line policy sales. In various forums this is what the Republicans have said they wanted (along with a few other things, but this is most of what they are asking for.) Yet they still voted against it, not for the benefit of the people they represent, but for the benefit of a unified Republican party.
What is so troubling about the party lines in Washington is that if Souder were to come forth and say "I need this for my district; I don't agree with this ideology, but I want half of the reforms in column A" he would be crucified by straying from his party.
Now the latest "weapon" in the war on health care is the current barrage of proposals will actually reduce the deficit over a 10 year period. I love the math in this kind of stuff, especially coming from my role as a pre-sales computer hardware guy. Spend $2Million now on a computer, which includes 3 years of service, and you'll save most of the money you'd pay for service on your existing gear over the next four. This has the same kind of ring to it; by fixing wasteful spending from the Medicare drug program, putting caps on reimbursement rates, and changing some regulations the government can afford to have its own insurance program (one where people still pay premiums into the system) and provide service that the private sector does not (covering pre-existing conditions.) This isn't an ideological issue, it is mapped as a simple financial one by the Congressional Budget Office.
So programs that pay for themselves (and potentially reduce the deficit) are against conservative beliefs? How so? Someone on the other side of the aisle came up with them.
