Local Republicans focus on GOP health-care alternative

WASHINGTON - As Speaker Nancy Pelosi's health care bill appears headed for House floor sometime between before Veterans Day, suburban Republican lawmakers are focusing their attention on a counter proposal submitted by their party leadership.

House Republicans offered their GOP Affordable Health Care for America Act this week as an alternative to the Democratic health care reform.

"Many people have a concern about the fact that (the Democrats' plan) is going to raise costs for individuals and it's going to expand welfare and it's going to cost $1.2 trillion," Rep. Peter Roskam, a Wheaton Republican, told the Daily Herald in a phone interview.

He said the Republican draft is "an attempt to try to get costs under control."

The Republican bill is smaller in price, length and scope than the Democrats'.

"The leadership sat down and decided to take just a few issues (which could be addressed) without big government and without spending money," Rep. Don Manzullo, a Rockford-area Republican said in an interview.

Among them, medical liability reform would impose new restrictions on consumer lawsuits.

Republicans say medical liability leads to defensive medicine and brings the costs up. According to Manzullo, "medical liability reform would offset the cost" of the reform.

The Republican reform would cost about $61 billion and cut the federal deficit by $68 billion over 10 years, a Congressional Budget Office preliminary analysis found.

The $1.1 trillion House Democratic bill would reduce the deficit by about $104 billion over the next decade.

To keep the cost of the bill down, Republicans would not require people to obtain insurance or employers to offer it. Neither would they expand Medicaid or offer federal subsidies to low-income people, as the bill introduced by Pelosi does.

Instead, the GOP legislation would offer $50 billion in federal incentives over the next decade to states that reduce the cost of insurance or the percentage of their uninsured residents.

The bill also includes measures similar to some of the Democratic provisions to lower the costs of premiums and make insurance affordable to more people.

It would make it easier for insurers to sell insurance across state lines, increasing competition, and allow small businesses to pool together through "association health plans" to increase their buying power and make them able to afford coverage for their employees.

Hinsdale's Rep. Judy Biggert said the reform would "lower premiums for American families and small businesses by as much as 10 percent."

The Congressional Budget Office said the Republican plan would on average reduce insurance premiums compared to what they would be under current law but premiums would go up for some people, mostly the less healthy, a finding that prompted Democratic criticisms.

Under the Republican proposal, insurance companies would not be prohibited from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, even though Biggert said that is "one thing that everybody agrees on is that we need to address the issue of pre-existing conditions."

Rather, the bill would offer $15 billion to states to establish high-risk pools for people who could not otherwise get coverage, and reinsurance programs, under which states act as a backstop to private insurers, paying a large share of the cost if claims exceed some threshold.

The Republican alternative recognizes that some high-risk people need supplementary aid, Roskam said.

But the congressional report also said the Republican plan would remain far from achieving universal insurance coverage, reducing the number of uninsured by about 3 million in 2019, leaving about 52 million people without medical coverage.

By comparison, the House Democrats' plan would bring 38 million people into the ranks of the insured.

Republicans dispute the Democrats' assertion that they have not tried to be part of the process, claiming instead that Democrats "were not really interested in bipartisanship," according to Roskam.

They underline tens of Republican health care bills that have been introduced and say most provisions in their final bill had already been presented as stand-alone bills or amendments.

Among them, Rep. Mark Kirk's proposal, which spokeswoman Susan Kuczka said shares the goals of the GOP proposal, was introduced on Oct. 29.

"The Republican alternative incorporates several aspects of Congressman Kirk's Medical Rights and Reform Act," she said.

Kirk, a Highland Park Republican, was not available to explain why he introduced his own legislation at a time when his party came up with a bill.

Biggert complained Republicans have "had no access to working with the other side of the aisle".

In the Ways and Means Committee, of which Roskam is a member, "38 Republican amendments were offered, and Chairman Charlie Rangel rejected every one of them," including his, he said.

An amendment Biggert proposed to the Education and Labor Committee bill aimed at ensuring that Americans who like their current employer-provided coverage can keep it. But she said she was still hoping for a debate to take place and for "some Democrats who will say, 'I think this is a better plan.'"

But Biggert acknowledged the Republican bill has no real chance of passing, since Democrats in the House "have far more votes than (Republicans) do."