You don't need Grassley's tweets to understand that he isn't approaching health care reform in good faith or what his vision on bipartisanship is when it comes to health care reform. Bipartisanship in his mind means the usual, Dems capitulating on a public option. He makes it absolutely clear in a letter he sent to President Obama, along with a handful of his Republican colleagues.
A group of Senate Republicans sent a letter to President Barack Obama declaring their opposition to including a government-run plan in a health-care overhaul, saying it would be a "federal government takeover" of the health system.
"Creating a brand-new government program will not only worsen our long-term financial outlook but also negatively impact American families who enjoy the private coverage of their choice," said the letter from nine Republicans who are working on bipartisan health-care legislation.
That "working on bipartisan" legislation really should be in quotes in the original. What these guys are working on is obstruction, as usual. So none of that's new.
Given that, though, how much more is it going to take for Max Baucus to wake up and smell the coffee? Why is Max Baucus still insisting on crafting a bill that Grassley will sign off on? From an interview they did together with John Harwood:
HARWOOD: Are you guys confident that this is going...
Sen. BAUCUS: I'm quite confident that we're going to get there.
HARWOOD: ...you'll get a bipartisan bill?
Senator CHARLES GRASSLEY: I want to have--I want to have a bipartisan bill because most of what we've done in the Finance Committee and what it takes to get things through the Senate is bipartisanship....
HARWOOD: Right. There will be an individual mandate to purpose coverage?
Sen. BAUCUS: There'll be a shared responsibility. That is that all Americans will have an obligation to have insurance of some kind or another.
HARWOOD: Yeah.
Sen. GRASSLEY: And I can say there's a lot of people in my party believes the same thing.
HARWOOD: And that shared responsibility extends to employers as well? You either insure your people or you pay into the system? Can you support that?
Sen. GRASSLEY: No. There would be a great difference in my party on that. There's two things that my caucus feel very strongly about. One is not to have a public option, and number two, not to have what you call play or pay.
HARWOOD: And are you opposed to pay or play? You will not support the bill that...
Sen. GRASSLEY: I'm opposed to play or pay.
HARWOOD: So how will you handle the issue of getting employers to participate?
Sen. GRASSLEY: I will handle that because if you have an individual mandate, then the individual's responsible for their own health care. And for people that can't afford it, there'll be refundable credits.
And it goes on. There are a number of issues in this interview which Grassley just flat out refuses consider. Yup, Republican bipartisanship for you. Not thate any of this is new, which makes the whole Baucus/Grassley partnership even more baffling.
Go back to March, when Baucus laid out his reform plan, with a few main policy points: an individual mandate to buy health insurance; choice would be preserved, nobody would have to drop their plan if they didn't want to; a health exchange would be created as a marketplace to shop for health insurance, all plans in the exchange couldn't deny care based on pre-existing conditions, and government subsidies would make premiums in the exchange affordable; and, a public health insurance plan would compete with private plans in the exchange.
On March 5, at the White House summit, Grassley laid out his opposition to the public plan. He's continued those attacks on the public health insurance option in the press and in editorials:
In his policy paper, Baucus called for the creation of an Independent Health Board to regulate the insurance exchange. On April 10th, the Des Moines Register reported that Chuck Grassley opposed an Independent Health Board, saying "I will continue to raise concerns about any group sometimes called a national health board... It tends to centralize health care decisions, but more importantly it tends to direct health care dollars, and we have to be very, very concerned about a national health board being set up."
Baucus advocates for comparative effectiveness research and health IT to give doctors information about what therapies work in his white paper. Grassley said that Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives should spread baseless claims about the policies: "I think they ought to hype them right now because people’s attention needs to be brought to it, and that’s the only way you’re going to get their attention. When the dust settles, they won’t have a leg to stand on and we will have and we will have a study and a tool that will be useful for doctors to use but not to dictate medicine."
Baucus called for eliminating overpayment to private insurers in the Medicare Advantage program in order to lower health care costs in his white paper. Grassley is opposed to eliminating these corporate giveaways.
Since Baucus released his white paper last November, Grassley has systematically come out against point after point. The Hill reported that Grassley is also working on an alternative health care proposal to rally behind if/when he decides Baucus's proposal is unacceptable:
"In tune with our responsibility as the loyal minority and loyal opposition, with emphasis on ‘loyal,’ we have to have a constructive alternative, with emphasis on ‘constructive,’ "Grassley said. "So we have to be developing a bipartisan package with Baucus, with that being our goal and right now our only goal, but [we] can’t wait until the midnight hour to have something that Republicans can rally behind."
Baucus needs to realize that he's got no partner in Chuck Grassley when it comes to meaningful, effective health care reform. He needs to worry more about crafting a proposal that the HELP Committee and the majority of House Dems, not to mention the President, will sign off on. That was the whole point of structuring this so the bill can pass through reconciliation.
Update: Just got this press release from Public Campaign Action Fund:
Washington, D.C. – The nine Republican Senators who sent a letter today to President Barack Obama to express their opposition to a central part of his health care plan have benefited greatly from health care and insurance industry donations, a new analysis from Public Campaign Action Fund shows.
The Senators have collectively taken $17.7 million from insurance and health care interests, according to data analyzed at the Center for Responsive Politics website, opensecrets.org. That amounts to nearly $2 million per Senator over their careers.
That's a shocker, huh?