Health Care Spat As GOP Tells Gibbs He's Dueling With Straw Man

Hey, Boner. If you've got such great ideas, what are you afraid of? Accept the invitation and wow us all with your wonderful plan.

* Number one: let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines. * Number two: allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do. * Number three: give states the tools to create their own innovative reforms that lower health care costs. * Number four: end junk lawsuits that contribute to higher health care costs by increasing the number of tests and procedures that physicians sometimes order not because they think it's good medicine, but because they are afraid of being sued.

In a nutshell, that's their plan. Can't tell how exactly they come up with that 10% savings figure. Fuzzy math perhaps.

Sooo... I just very quickly scanned through the GOP's proposed bill text.

I would like someone from the GOP to explain to me why they were so opposed to the public option "state opt-in/opt-out" idea because that seems to be more or less what they're proposing... a bunch of state run "high risk pools".

Of course, they seem to pull 25 billion in funding out of thin air, and I haven't yet gotten to the details about how they plan to deal with eligibility... not to mention, they're in love with HSAs. I have no problem with HSAs per se - but anyone that thinks an HSA will ever be more than a trinket is fooling themselves. Most catastrophic/chronic diseases - cancers, heart disease, strokes, etc - have single treatment price tags in excess of 5 to 6 figures.

A few things strike me...

#1 - The GOP bill is actually an amendment to the existing bill... and it's about 1/10 the size... so, while I haven't gotten through what they're amending, it seems to me that somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of the existing bill is OK with the GOP... so tell me again why GOP allies are calling it nazi-care? Could Mr. Boehner kindly talk to his nutty fringe and explain that the Democratic bill is apparently 90% OK?

#2 - While the GOP also calls for ends to rescission and 'reasonable premiums' -- it looks to me like they've outsourced it all to state-based testing and formulas. I'm not finding anything regarding individual means testing. A lot of this sure sounds like passing the buck to states, to me.

#3 - I'm not seeing any of the Medicare fixes... presumably, the GOP is accepting those Dem-authored provisions as is? How about the GOP give the Democrats a little credit for that?

Again... this just based off a very quick read of the TOC and a few of the more interested/eye-catching provisions --

But this looks awfully NCLB-esque to me... a Lot of state mandates, with plenty of punishment/rewards, but not much in the way of federal leadership (and I don't see where they get the money from, either).

There might be a few areas that could be cherrypicked -- maybe some of the HSA provisions, perhaps pieces from the tort reform section -- into an acceptable bill, but all in all, the GOP response seems to be decidedly milquetoast as an 'alternative'. It's a couple of shiny toys (HSAs, tort reform) that don't really do much good for consumers (but if done properly, wouldn't hurt, either), a whole lot of outsourcing of details to states, and a whole lot of sturm und drung for no real reason.

Looking forward to February 25th when Obama counteracts the GOP's bullshit line that HCR is a "job killing government takeover".