College Republican Federation of Virginia

“Health care is not a Democrat issue, it’s a Republican issue. It’s a conservative issue. Democrats look at problems like this, and they have one answer. Government. We need bigger government, they say, so we can manage problems like this. That’s the wrong answer. Conservative principles have the answers for health care.” – Governor Mitt Romney

After all of the talk over the past month of socialized medicine from every candidate of the Democratic Party, it’s refreshing to see the Republican field begin to propose new ideas for health care.

The Democrats are going down a dangerous road. They are rehashing old, outdated, and unsuccessful ideas from Europe’s past. The Democrats are promoting the same ideas that France, England, and other European nations have supported for decades. Some may watch Michael Moore’s documentary on health care and reach their own conclusions. However, I think the best way to determine how Europe’s socialized policies are doing is to see what the voters in Europe think about them. While running for French President, Nicolas Sarkozy acclaimed that “Nobody in France dares to say the truth: the United States is the greatest economic, military and monetary power in the world.” He was elected earlier this year over a socialist to become the President of France. Obviously, the French people can see what America is doing right, but the Democrats can’t.

On the Republican side, there are many promising proposals. Both Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have proposed free-market reforms to health care.

Rudy wants to decrease the costs of plans by lowering taxes and increasing competition. He wants to limit frivolous lawsuits that drive doctors out of the profession. He also wants portability in health care, that will allow citizens to keep health care no matter how many times their employment changes. He also supports tax breaks that were very similar to the Bush proposals over the last few years.

The most innovative approach, in my opinion, comes from Governor Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wants every American to have health care, and points to the bipartisan successes he had as the Governor of Massachusetts. Working with an 85% Democratic legislature, he passed market-based reforms that lowered the cost of health care, ensured that citizens were taking advantage of the existing Medicaid program, and helped subsidize health care to low-income Americans.

Some may say that subsidizing health care is a step to socialized medicine, but let’s take a second to look at Mitt Romney’s argument. “You hear this all the time, we have 45 million people without health care. That’s not true. We have 45 million people without health insurance, but they have health care in almost every case. If somebody has a heart attack in their apartment, they have no insurance … they’re getting health care, they’re just not paying for it, no insurance company is paying for it, who’s paying for it? The rest of society is. The taxpayers, the people who are buying insurance, everybody else is paying for it. … Not the people who are sick. We have 45 million people without health insurance, but they’re getting care. The money’s already there. It’s already being spent. Wouldn’t it be smarter to take the money being spent on programs and cost-shifting and use that money instead to help people buy their own private insurance? Get them insured rather than handing out care at hospitals for free.”

Innovative, conservative ideas are the future of health care reform. Rudy Giuliani is on the right track, but Mitt Romney has hit the nail on the head. Getting the uninsured insured is in the nation’s best interest, and is in the best interest of conservative philosophy.

(I will be following this up with a detailed look at Mitt Romney’s proposal as well as Rudy Giuliani’s proposal.)