Jack "flag pin" Kingston (R GA-01) came to Valdosta, Georgia for a second Health Care Town Hall, and explained his Republican health care plan.
It's competition (by multiple insurers across state lines), tax breaks, and vouchers. Until he gets pressed on where unemployed people will find the money to pay for these things; then he adds another element.
But first, let him explain it himself:
Here's Kingston:
Let the folks in Alabama buy their health care from Kentucky and Georgia and New Jersey and New York and everywhere else if we make it more competitive. Healthy individuals, giving them the tax breaks that corporations have. And a voucher and a credit for somebody. Let me tell ya, give that to those 10 million in the wedge who fall through the cracks.
I'll come back to the unemployed chicken growers in a moment.
Frist, what's Kingston talking about, 10 million? Kingston claims that while the CBO says there are 45.7 million uninsured, really there are only 10 million. The slide says:
Who are the uninsured?
45.7 Million Uninsured
- 6.4M Medicaid Undercount
- 4.3M Medicaid/SCHP Eligible
- 10.1M Over 300% Poverty ($68,000)
- 5M Childless Adults (18-34 years old)
- 9.3M Remaining Uninsured
Former National Economic Council Director Keith Hennessey
Once he subtracts all those items, he ends up with only 10 million people who fit his definition of uninsured.
Here Kingston explains it all:
Most of the 45.7 million uninsured, says Kingston, either are covered by Medicaid, aren't eligible because they're not citizens, or could be covered and just don't know it:
"They don't have an insurance problem; they have a communication problem."
Kingston didn't provide a URL for these figures, but I found them on the GOP web site. Kingston's "Remaining Uninsured" is Hennesey's "Non-citizens". At least to his credit Kingston isn't harping on that. It would detract from his great care to appear reasonable, so he can make a much more insidious argument.
Kingston says the only real problem with health care in the U.S. is those 10 million who are by his definition the only ones uninsured:
Unemployed or they've got some other kind of financial problem. They're too young for Medicare; they're too rich for Medicaid; they fall through the cracks.
I would suggest to you that that's where we need to focus.
(applause)
Right in that crack.
(applause)
Because we do have problems in health care; we do need health care reform; but to me that's where the battleground is.
If your kitchen sink is leaking you fix the sink, you don't take a wrecking ball to the entire kitchen.
Focus in the crack!
He said it again later:
What we really need to do on health care is to really focus on the 10 million who are falling through the cracks. Put the energy on them first.
But the way I think we can achieve universal access is trying to make it more affordable to people.
And to cross the state lines purchasing, even out the tax; purchase with pre-tax dollars that you can buy, high risk (something), vouchers.
I think that combination is the way to get there.
You know, it's not going to be perfect at the end of the day, it's going to be working a process.
Once you start, if you have a big government bureaucracy that comes in, you'll never get rid of it.
Competition, tax breaks, and vouchers: that's Kingston's solution for universal health care, including for his 10 million who are falling through the cracks.
Kingston is the chair of the GOP Theme Team, which meets weekly to make up sound bites and get them out there through floor speeches, right wing blogs, and radio and TV talking heads. This 10 million talking point (which Kingston also presented at his last series of town halls) was the very first question asked at Sanford Bishop's GA-02 Health Care Town Hall in Albany, Georgia. Bishop, a Democrat, fortunately knows how to counter Kingston's line. The more Democrats who know what Kingston is putting out there, the better we can counter it.
Kingston claims most (I think he said 85%) people who have health insurance are happy with what they've got. You can help Kingston out by taking his health care survey which includes questions such as:
- Over the last 5 years, how have your healthcare costs changed? Increased Decreased Unchanged
- Now, What do you think about America's healthcare system? Do you believe America’s current healthcare system is broken? Yes No Unsure
- What priority should Congress and the President give to healthcare reform? Highest priority Medium priority Low priority Unsure
Kingston never mentions recission (insurers can legally cancel your insurance if they find any pre-existing condition you didn't declare, such as acne or being beaten by your spouse; yes, really; ask Johnny Isakson), or rapidly increasing premiums, or the parts that insurance doesn't cover anyway that can still bankrupt you, or that health care costs contribute to 60% of bankruptcies in the U.S., or that 45,000 people die each year due to lack of medical insurance. Let's hear it for Alan Grayson!
Back to those unemployed chicken growers:
Imagine being an unemployed chicken grower in Coffee County, Georgia, in Douglas. We had a chicken plant that closed. The chicken plant had chicken growers who supplied the chickens to them. They don't actually own the chickens; but they raised the chickens for the chicken plant. It's a full time job, but they don't work for the plant. When the plant closes, they're out of business. You give someone like that a voucher, to go out on the free market with this voucher and buy their insurance. Government wouldn't have to be involved in it except for the tax voucher. It could be a tool that would help people who need a helping hand but it would also keep the government out of it.
Eventually somebody asked Kingston the obvious next question:
The other statement I'd like to make is what is the average median income in the state of Georgia, and how can some of these families afford the health care you're talking about if some kind of assistance is not given to them?
And what's the first word out of Kingston's mouth when he answers?
You have Medicaid for a great proportion of the population who can't afford it. And what's my point here is we want to make health care more competitive in order to drive down the costs. And then beyond that if you can't get covered by the plan because of a pre-existing illness or whatever, then you would be able participate in a state-run (inaudible) high-risk pool, or you would get a voucher for it.
That's right, when pressed on actually providing health care for the unemployed, the first thing Kingston mentions is government-run health care.
Jack Kingston for a public option!
OK, not really. Here's Kingston displaying empathy for the uninsured at his previous town hall meeting in Valdosta:
Ah, there it is:
84% of Americans who are satisfied with their health care.
To Kingston's credit, he did hold a public town hall, unlike Johnny Isakson (GA-Sen) who only holds health care meetings for attendees supplied by local Chambers of Commmerce and telephone meetings only for those who have signed up on his web site; Saxby Chambliss (GA-Sen) does much the same as Isakson, only with less content.
Yet Kingston's apparent rationality (when he's not in irrational talking point rant mode) lets him purvey misinformation that many people find plausible. If you know about it, you can recognize it and counter it.
Videos and pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange; some related material will appear in LAKE's blog, On the LAKE Front. Those unemployed chicken growers, for example, are a story in their own right, to follow in another diary or blog post.
PS: For those with Civil War Tourette's, every Democrat who ran for local office from Lowndes County Georgia in 2008 was elected, Alan Grayson was elected in the south, too, and the last two poll questions are still for you.