Marathon Pundit: Report from the bloggers' conference call with Sen. John Barrasso

One of the most wretched ideas proposed by the liberals to come out of the ObamaCare push is that the Senate should be weakened, or even abolished. The low population of the Plains and Mountain West states are cited as an example of why they think the Senate is incompatible with their idea of America. Of course not coincidentally, the Senate, at least for now, blocked the Democrats' proposal for health care reform. Thank you, Scott Brown!

But in their wisdom, the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing, even if Wyoming could not have possibly figured into their vision of the United States. Tiny Wyoming blesses the Senate with the upper chamber's only accountant and one of its two doctors. And that MD, Republican John Barrasso, held a conference call this afternoon that I participated in.

Tomorrow's major news story will be Barack Obama's bipartisan health care summit at the Blair House in Washington, and ObamaCare was the topic of the good doctor's call.

In regards to the president's proposal, which was unveiled on Monday online, Barrasso dismissed it, labeling it "mostly the bill that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve--except more expensive." In my previous post, Illinois GOP chairman Pat Brady said he expected the summit to "be nothing more than a media event." Barrasso didn't go that far, but said of Obama, "I don't think he has been very open to Republican ideas."

Obama has a credibility problem that has contributed to his popularity drop. Of course the mainstream media is slower to catch on, and Barrasso told us about slapping down a claim by reporter that ObamaCare will save taxpayers $100 billion. "Nobody believes that," Barrasso declared. "Democrats don't believe it, Republicans don't believe it, taxpayers don't believe it." Obama and the Democrats keep claiming that the $862 billion economic stimulus created jobs, but only six percent of Americans agree.

Price controls suck. Okay, Dr. Barrasso didn't say that, but I remember the 1970s, and although I was just a kid, I could tell then that they didn't work. Obama's health care proposal includes a board that would determine "fair" rates for insurers to charge, which Barrasso fears could lead to insolvent insurance companies.

If ObamaCare is bad, what is the Republican idea? "To start over," Barrasso stated. "We do need health care reform in this country, but this isn't it," he added. A majority of American oppose the Democratic plan.

During these sessions I often ask a seemingly obscure question--I like to think outside of the arena, but the gorilla in the room is tort reform, so I asked him if there was any chance that it could be included in Thursday's discussion. "Well it should be," he replied. Lawsuit abuse adds to the cost of health care in a number of ways, he explained. Pricier malpractice insurance is one byproduct. As is defensive medicine--the unnecessary use of tests to protect doctors to protect them if they are sued--which Barrasso says "is much more expensive than what we are seeing in terms of liability insurance that doctors pay."

Those costs are passed on to the consumer. But isn't health care reform supposed to drive down costs?

We need tort reform. We need a different plan for health care reform.

And we need a strong Senate. The Founding Fathers were right.

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