Time To Get Tough Part 4

Luis Lopez is a Democrat and youth counselor in Florida. He tells the story of an exchange he had with a 13-year-old pregnant girl he met in an inner-city, low-income housing project. He asked who was going to pay for her baby. Smiling, she said, "Medicaid and Social Security will pay for it." "What about the father?" "We broke up," she said. The girl went on to explain that her grandmother would raise her child. Then Lopez asked the pregnant teen what her mom thought about the fact that she was so young and pregnant. "My mom had me when she was 14," the girl replied. "So what's the problem?"11 It wasn't always this way. A lot of us remember a time when there was a social stigma and sense of shame against living on the public dole. There's a great scene in the movie Cinderella Man with Russell Crowe that ill.u.s.trates how radically our ent.i.tlement culture has changed America. The movie is based on the true story of boxer James J. Braddock, a fighter during the Great Depression who goes on to become heavyweight champion of the world. As Braddock struggles to establish his boxing career, he eventually has to turn to public a.s.sistance to feed his wife and kids. He's deeply embarra.s.sed and ashamed, but he has no other options, so he accepts the money. Later, as his boxing career takes off and the prize money starts rolling in, Braddock returns to the welfare office and stands in line patiently. When he reaches the front of the line, he hands the welfare worker a stack of cash to pay back the government the money he had received to support his kids. That really happened. But today, given our ent.i.tlement culture, we can hardly imagine something like that except in the movies.

We have to combat the welfare mentality that says individuals are ent.i.tled to live off taxpayers. We need to reaffirm that mothers and fathers have a responsibility to their children-and that it starts with getting married before they have them. But unfortunately our welfare system has created monetary incentives to avoid marriage and to have more out-of-wedlock children in order to get bigger welfare benefits. Each year, taxpayers sh.e.l.l out $300 billion to unmarried parents.12 That's almost a third of a trillion dollars that could easily be saved if we could restore personal responsibility and the importance of marriage before childbearing. Your tax dollars in the form of Medicaid also pick up the delivery costs for 40 percent of all children born in America, most of those children being born to never-married mothers.13 For too many of these mothers and their children, living off welfare becomes a way of life. Consider these numbers: since becoming president, Obama has added 8 million more Americans to the rolls,14 and food stamp spending has more than doubled since 2007, going from $33 billion to $77 billion.15 But even more shocking than these figures is that half of food stamps go to people who have been on public a.s.sistance for eight and a half years or more.16 The only good thing about this for Obama, and he knows it . . . they will all be voting for him.

Obama's "Food Stamp Crime Wave"

The food stamp program was originally created as temporary a.s.sistance for families with momentary times of need. And it shouldn't be needed often. Thankfully, 96 percent of America's poor parents say their children never suffer even a day of hunger.17 But when half of food stamp recipients have been on the dole for nearly a decade, something is clearly wrong, and some of it has to do with fraud.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Obama's food stamp policies are ushering in a ma.s.sive "food stamp crime wave."18 That's been matched by fewer prosecutions of illegal food stamp transactions involving alcohol or other non-eligible items.19 And "millionaires are now legally ent.i.tled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income."20 As the Wall Street Journal notes, "The Obama administration is far more enthusiastic about boosting food-stamp enrollment than about preventing fraud." Under Obama's rapid expansion of food stamps, recipients are selling welfare benefit cards on Facebook and Craigslist and using the money to buy drugs,21 food stamp checks are going to prison inmates,22 a $2 million lottery winner qualified for food stamps (and complained that he still deserved food stamps because the government took half his winnings in taxes),23 and the program is rife with incredibly costly scams including one enterprising crook who created more than 1,000 fraudulent food stamp claims and pocketed $8 million.24 And that's just scratching the surface of the program's waste, fraud, and abuse. The really infuriating thing is that the Obama administration doesn't seem to care about how taxpayers are being shaken down by this outrageously mismanaged government program.

The blatant waste of taxpayers' dollars doesn't bother Obama, because it's all part of his broader nanny-state agenda. It seems he believes the more voters he gives welfare goodies to, the more votes he'll rack up for reelection. Perhaps that's why his administration doesn't give a rip about policing fraud or administering responsible oversight-he's buying votes! And like any good leftist knows, the bigger you grow the welfare state, the bigger you grow your electoral army. It's an outrageous betrayal of the American taxpayer and of the twin pillars of hard work and self-reliance that support the American Dream of freedom, progress, and bettering oneself and one's family.

We see the same trend in public housing, where since Barack Obama's election, ma.s.sive crowds have been lining up to get Section 8 housing. In Atlanta, for example, 30,000 people showed up in the hopes of getting government housing applications or vouchers.25 There's no doubt that some of those individuals are truly in need, whether due to age or disability, but the fact is that we know that able-bodied, non-elderly individuals without children routinely enter the program and spend on average nearly eight years in public housing.26 That's outrageous.

People who have the ability to work should. But with the government happy to send checks, too many of them don't. On average, able-bodied welfare recipients work just sixteen hours a week. How can anyone expect to climb out of poverty working just over three hours a day in a five-day work week?27 More hours at work equals more income. But our government's welfare trap has built a system that creates a disincentive for work. The more hours you work the fewer welfare goodies you get. So what do you think people are going to do? They keep their work hours artificially low to keep their welfare checks artificially high. And once again, America's twin virtues of hard work and self-reliance take a beating.

When you realize that every seventh person you pa.s.s on the sidewalk now receives food stamps, and that Obama has upped welfare spending to just under $1 trillion a year, it becomes painfully clear that this president's rapid expansion of the welfare industry is part of a much broader effort to "fundamentally transform America," as Obama put it early in his presidency.

I've got a newsflash for you, Mr. President: America likes America the way the Founding Fathers built her-as a nation that deeply values hard work and self-reliance. The next president America elects must be committed to serious welfare reforms that overhaul the system and roll back Obama's disastrous public a.s.sistance policies.

We know how to reform welfare because we've done it before. In 1996, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and congressional Republicans pa.s.sed and pushed President Clinton to sign the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. In the wake of the bill's pa.s.sage, the liberal New York Times ran a breathless op-ed with the headline: "A Sad Day for Poor Children." "This is not reform, it is punishment," read the article. "The effect on cities will be devastating."28 As usual, the New York Times could not have been more wrong. The results were as dramatic as they were hopeful: welfare caseloads went down 60 percent, 2.8 million families transitioned from welfare to work, and 1.6 million kids climbed out of poverty.29

Welfare to Work

The secret to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act's success was that it tied welfare to work. To get your check, you had to prove that you were enrolled in job-training or trying to find work. But here's the rub: the 1996 Welfare Reform Act only dealt with one program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), not the other seventy-six welfare programs which, today, cost taxpayers more than $900 billion annually.30 We need to take a page from the 1996 reform and do the same for other welfare programs. Benefits should have strings attached to them. After all, if it's our money recipients are getting, we the people should have a say in how it's spent.

The way forward is to do what we did with AFDC and attach welfare benefits to work. The Welfare Reform Act of 2011-proposed by Republican Congressmen Jim Jordan of Ohio, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Scott Garrett of New Jersey-does just that.31 Their bill, if enacted, would make sure that welfare programs would serve only those who truly need them, place a cap on welfare expenditures to prevent bureaucrats from endlessly expanding the programs, give more authority to the states over welfare spending, prevent federal funding of abortions through welfare programs, and enforce work requirements, among other reforms.32 It's a serious plan that deserves to be pa.s.sed and signed into law.

Of course, just as with the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, liberals will cry, kick, scream, and throw temper tantrums. But let them. It's far more important that we help poor people to become independent, self-sufficient individuals who gain the benefits of work. Let's get it done.

Next, I believe that the state of Florida made a smart move when in 2011 it became the only state to require drug testing of all recipients of the welfare program Temporary a.s.sistance to Needy Families (TANF). As Florida Governor Rick Scott said, "While there are certainly legitimate needs for public a.s.sistance, it is unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction. This new law will encourage personal accountability and will help to prevent the misuse of tax dollars."33 The governor is right. It's common sense. By the way, Rick Scott is doing a great job and not getting the credit he deserves.

Look, millions of employees have to get drug tested for their jobs. Do they make a big stink about it? No. It's only smart. But leave it to the know-nothings at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to whine and cry about a requirement that millions of hard-working taxpayers go through year in and year out. "The wasteful program created by this law subjects Floridians who are impacted by the economic downturn, as well as their families, to a humiliating search of their urine and body fluids," said a foolish Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU Florida.34 Humiliating? Excuse me? How is it "humiliating" to make sure that taxpayers aren't funding a drug addict's next hit? And how is it "humiliating" to take a drug screen that millions of working people take with no problem? It's not. It's just one more example of liberals' attempting to erode personal responsibility and waste taxpayers' money.

The bill requires that TANF recipients take and pa.s.s a drug test. If it's a two-parent household, both individuals get tested. Anyone who tests positive for drugs is ineligible for benefits for a year. If they fail it a second time they are ineligible for three years. Recipients cover the cost of the screening, which they later recoup through benefits.35 If parents fail the drug test, benefits for children can be awarded to a third-party recipient acting as a guardian provided he or she pa.s.ses a drug test.36 This common sense approach should be a no-brainer. It's insane to ask taxpayers to foot the bill for some junkie's drug habit when America is already $15 trillion in the hole and many Americans are fighting to survive in the Obama economy. Bottom line: you do drugs, no welfare check. End of story.

Finally, it's time to get tough on those who cheat and defraud taxpayers. The Obama-fueled welfare "crime wave" must end fast. Otherwise, it will further spread the mindset that says, "Who cares if I cheat the system, it's not my money. I deserve free stuff." That means punis.h.i.+ng violators, not turning a blind eye like the Obama administration has done. And that includes punis.h.i.+ng corrupt bureaucrats who run scams and leave taxpayers holding the bill. Also, no more millionaires getting welfare checks. That's outrageous and must be stopped immediately.

America has a big heart. We believe in helping our fellow citizens when they are down on their luck, become seriously disabled, or reach an age when they can't care for themselves. For those folks, the safety net is necessary and totally appropriate.

Yet for too many people, welfare has become a way of life. There's nothing "compa.s.sionate" about allowing welfare dependency to be pa.s.sed from generation to generation. Kids deserve better. America deserves better.

President Reagan put it best: "Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."

EIGHT.

REPEAL OBAMACARE.

We have to pa.s.s the bill so that you can find out what is in it.

-Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi,

March 9, 2010

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Congress had to pa.s.s Obamacare so we could find out what's in it. Now we have. And what's inside those 2,733 pages is a job-killing, health care-destroying monstrosity. It can't be reformed, salvaged, or fixed. It's that bad. Obamacare has to be killed now before it grows into an even bigger mess, as it inevitably will. Obamacare takes full effect in 2014. If it's not repealed before then, it will be more than just another failed government ent.i.tlement program-it will be the trillion-ton weight that finally takes down our economy forever.

Polls show that more than 80 percent of Americans are reasonably pleased with their current health insurance plan.1 That's an impressive number. Still, everyone agrees we need to take steps to reduce the rising costs of health care and make insurance more affordable. But socialized medicine is not the solution. That's why the majority of Americans are against Obamacare. They know that giving our inept, b.u.mbling federal government control over health care is an invitation to disaster. Obamacare is a heat-seeking missile that will destroy jobs and small businesses; it will explode health-care costs; and it will lead to health care that is far less innovative than it is today. Every argument that you'd make against socialism you can make against socialized health care, and any candidate who isn't 100 percent committed to sc.r.a.pping Obamacare is not someone America should elect president. Repealing Obamacare may be one of the most important and consequential actions our next president takes.

Obamacare Puts Small Businesses on Life Support

It's sad to see just how many citizens-some of them smart people-got duped into believing Obama's bait and switch sales pitch on Obamacare. Take, for instance, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Schultz did a terrific job of turning Starbucks around. But when it came to Obamacare, he took the bait hook, line, and sinker. "When I was invited to the White House prior to health care being reformed, I was very supportive of the president's plan," Schultz said. However, after Schultz and his team studied the ma.s.sive bill more closely, he changed his tune. "As the bill is currently written and if it was going to land in 2014 under the current guidelines, the pressure on small businesses, because of the [individual] mandate, is too great."2 That's putting it mildly. A September 2011 report by UBS, the highly respected financial services company, said, "Arguably the biggest impediment to hiring (particularly hiring of less skilled workers) is healthcare reform, which has the added drawback of straining state and federal budgets." 3 The report went on to explain in simple language why Obamacare is such a jobs killer: The new law requires most businesses to provide a generous "essential" package of benefits, which is beyond what many small businesses provide today. It subjects businesses to highly complex rules that increase the cost, risk, and "ha.s.sle factor" of adding to payrolls. Companies that do offer insurance can be fined iflow-income employees take a government-subsidized plan. All firms with more than 50 workers must provide benefits, which creates an incentive for smaller firms to stay "under the limit" by expanding overseas, outsourcing, or dividing into two companies.4 And liberals scratch their heads and wonder why businesses don't want to hire?

Simple: companies know Obama is anti-business, and his government-run health-care takeover has created a major disincentive to hire new workers. So business leaders aren't hiring. Instead, they will just s.h.i.+p more jobs overseas or automate their systems with machines. Just do some simple math. If you have a business with fifty employees, would you hire that fatal fifty-first employee and instantly subject yourself to a $100,000+ penalty ($2,000 for every employee in your company) for having the audacity to create more jobs, enlarge your business, and stimulate the economy? No. You would either put a freeze on hiring (in the hopes Obamacare will be repealed or overturned by the Supreme Court), outsource jobs to other countries, or create a second company (which will grow more slowly than if you concentrated your resources) to avoid the penalty. That's where we are today, and that's why we have record unemployment. This isn't rocket science.

Obamacare also slaps companies who already insure their employees with $3,000 fines per employee if the health-care benefits they offer aren't up to Obama's standards. The White Castle hamburger chain ran the numbers and discovered that these new regulations will eat up 55 percent of their net income after 2014.5 How in the world can anyone expect businesses to hire new workers under these kinds of insane requirements?

Not surprisingly, the instant businesses began crunching the numbers, thousands of businesses and states began asking for "waivers" from Obamacare. So far just under 1,500 waivers have been granted.6 And guess who the big winners have been? President Obama's biggest backers who championed Obamacare! More than 50 percent of the waivers have gone to union members. And in the recent round of new waivers, 20 percent of them went to Nancy Pelosi's district.7 You just can't make this stuff up. How is it fair to let Obama's pals off the hook and grant them waivers but force the rest of America to be stuck with Obamacare? Mr. President, you need to give all Americans a waiver!

Obamacare Pa.s.sed, Premiums Skyrocketed

What's incredible is that Obamacare hasn't even kicked in yet and already it's doing tremendous damage. During the health-care debate, Obama swore that pa.s.sing Obamacare would "bring down the cost of health care for families, for businesses, and for the federal government." He also said that pa.s.sing his plan would "lower premiums for the typical family by $2,500 a year."8 In September 2011, the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks annual employer health insurance, released a study revealing that health insurance premiums leapt 9 percent in 2011. As Senator Orrin Hatch put it, "The president's promise that his partisan health law would lower costs was just empty rhetoric."9 Liberals could hardly believe it-they couldn't understand how health-care costs could have risen so much when their hero Barack Obama had promised that they wouldn't. Obama claimed his socialized medicine plan would immediately "bend the cost curve downward." He said the bill's pre-2014 requirements, such as forcing employers to cover millions of adult "children" up to twenty-six years old on their parents' health plans, would push costs down. Well, the Kaiser report found that 2.3 million adult "kids" have been added so far in the wake of Obamacare pa.s.sing. And guess what happened? Under Obama, the average family's health insurance premiums have risen $2,393. That's almost the exact opposite of what the president promised. How's that for "hope and change"?10 As business and economics columnist Robert Samuelson concluded, "The study reminds us that runaway costs are the health system's core problem; [Obamacare] does nothing to solve it-and would actually make it worse.... If roughly 30 million or so Americans get insurance and no basic changes are made in the delivery system, then added demand will lead to higher costs, longer waiting periods, or both.... [Obamacare] was also bound to raise the costs of hiring workers by compelling employers to provide expensive coverage. That prospect can't be helping job creation."11 Looking back, it's incredible that anyone believed Obama and Nancy Pelosi's wild rhetoric. Remember when Pelosi promised us that pa.s.sing Obamacare would magically create jobs? Her exact words were even bolder. Pelosi said, "It's about jobs. In its life, it [Obamacare] will create four million jobs-400,000 jobs almost immediately."12 400,000 jobs almost immediately . . . incredible, isn't it? Liberals were fools to have believed such garbage, especially when there were so many small business owners pleading with the government not to crush their ability to create jobs.

Obamacare Is Killing Jobs

Instead of creating new jobs, Obamacare is destroying jobs. And the worst part is yet to come, since the truly painful provisions don't kick in until 2014. Businesses like Boeing, Caterpillar, and Deere & Company are already tallying up the job-killing costs of Obamacare. The numbers are ugly. These companies will now have to find $150 million, $100 million, and $150 million respectively-and that's just the cost to meet one provision in the new law.13 Where does Obama think these sums will come from? Does he not understand that businesses exist to make a profit? Every time government adds a cost to a business, that company either has to pa.s.s the cost along to consumers, fire or stop hiring workers, or both. These three companies are big enough to absorb Obamacare's body blow and still survive. But what about small businesses that are struggling to grow and would love to hire more workers? Those are the companies that will suffer the most under Obamacare. And don't forget, small businesses are our biggest jobs creators. In fact, over the last fifteen years, small businesses have been responsible for 64 percent of net new jobs.14 How many jobs will Obamacare kill? A study from the National Federation of Independent Business found that Obamacare could mean the loss of 1.6 million jobs, 66 percent of which would be from small businesses. 15 Obama will probably dismiss that study because it comes from an organization that has the word "business" in its name. Fine. Then maybe he should listen to the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, who said during congressional testimony that the bill would kill 800,000 full-time jobs in the first decade alone.16 Bottom line: as Minnesota Congressman John Kline put it, "To suggest [Obamacare] doesn't undermine job creation is to deny reality."17

Obamacare Will Destroy Patient Choice and Explode Spending

In addition to killing jobs, Obamacare also destroys a patient's right to choose the insurance and doctor he wants. Whole books have been written about what's wrong with Obamacare and how we can improve health care without wrecking our economy, like The Truth about Obamacare by Pacific Research Inst.i.tute President Sally C. Pipes. But even a casual observer can see that Obama's rhetoric doesn't align with reality. Remember when Obama promised us that "if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. n.o.body is talking about taking that away from you"?18 Yeah, well that was a flat out lie. Here's why: once the law goes into full effect in 2014, one out of three employers plan to drop employee health benefits entirely and just pay the government penalty.19 That means those workers will be shoved into the government's subsidized insurance exchanges. And nothing will make liberals happier.

As liberals see it, pus.h.i.+ng businesses to dump their current health-care plans and funnel their workers into the government-run health-care plans is a backdoor way to drag America closer to a so-called "single payer system," otherwise known as total government-run health care. As Howard Dean joyfully said, "Most small businesses are not going to be in the health insurance business anymore after this thing goes into effect."20 So the line Obama sold the country about everyone being able to keep the plan they have was a total con job. As the president knew all along, millions of workers' current insurance plans will be sc.r.a.pped entirely. Obamacare is nothing more than a lurch toward total government-controlled health care.

It's crazy that this plan was even proposed-America is a debtor nation. How in the world does it make sense to create a budget-busting government program like Obamacare when the United States is already $15 trillion in the hole? It's financial suicide.

The original price tag Obama and his liberal supporters quoted us was also a total sham. Not wanting to quote a price that used the word "trillion," Obama and Pelosi made sure to jigger the numbers so that he could claim Obamacare would cost $940 billion over the decade. Yet as Dr. Jeffrey H. Anderson points out, "Even this colossal tally is like the introductory price quoted by a cell phone provider. It's the price before you pay for minutes, fees, and overcharges-and before the price balloons after the introductory offer expires." Using the CBO's numbers, Anderson calculates that Obamacare's actual cost from 2014 (when the plan fully kicks in) to 2023 will be $2.0 trillion, more than double what Obama and Pelosi claimed, in order to insure the 30 million Americans Obama says are uninsured.21 As usual, liberals play a sh.e.l.l game with how much they're planning to screw taxpayers for. The Obama administration said they would pay for the program by slas.h.i.+ng $ 575 billion from Medicare and make up the rest in tax hikes. I think we can count on tax hikes-lots of them.

Now take a closer look at that number of uninsured Americans-30 million. Throughout the health-care debate, Obama chronically talked about the "46 million uninsured Americans." Over and over we had that number pounded into us like a nail. Then, all of a sudden, Obama decided that, no, the actual number of people who couldn't get health-care coverage was 30 million. That's quite a drop! But of course he used the smaller number after having blasted the inflated number far and wide.

But pretend for a moment that the 46 million was real. According to the ultra right-wing New York Times, here's how that number breaks down "with the caveat that there is overlap in these numbers" (which is why they don't exactly add up to 46 million). One out of five of the people he claimed were uninsured weren't even U.S. citizens! Another 13.7 million have plenty of money to buy health care (they make more than $75,000 a year) but choose not to get it. Eleven million poorer Americans are Medicaid or SCHIP eligible but just haven't enrolled yet. That leaves 13 million young people (ages nineteen to twenty-nine) who are either fresh out of college, can afford insurance but think they're invincible, are in-between jobs, or who are searching for jobs.22 There's no doubt some of these folks need a safety net under them until they start their careers. The question is, was it worth it to jeopardize the world's greatest health-care system and shackle America with $2 trillion of additional debt to address the temporary health-care needs of 4 percent of the country? Or could we have devised a smarter, more efficient, less expensive solution that would have accomplished the same goal? Only a fool would choose the former over the latter.

We may get lucky and have the Supreme Court declare Obamacare unconst.i.tutional. After all, there's no doubt that the government forcing all citizens to buy a product is a direct violation of the Commerce Clause. That would set a very dangerous precedent. "If Congress may require that individuals purchase a particular good or service," says Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, "we could simply require that Americans buy certain cars.... For that matter, we could attack the obesity problem by requiring Americans to buy fruits and vegetables."23 Hatch is right. The individual mandate is a ma.s.sive federal overreach and is clearly unconst.i.tutional. But as every conservative knows, the Supreme Court tramples on the Const.i.tution all the time. So it's anyone's guess what they will do.

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.

Bring Down Costs through Compet.i.tion

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 compet.i.tion between insurance companies. Compet.i.tion 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 compet.i.tively 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 compet.i.tion 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.24 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. Const.i.tution 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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.25 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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."26 Increasing compet.i.tion is common sense. We need to pa.s.s laws that encourage it.

Real Tort Reform Right Now

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.27 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-cla.s.s 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.28 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 a.s.sociation. "Physicians are afraid of being hauled into court and as a result order tests they ordinarily would not order."29 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 pa.s.sed 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.

NINE.