Tom Coburn

"We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns," Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. "It's the southerners."

I say give me a dozen more Jim DeMints or Tom Coburns and I'll give you healthcare reform that works.  I'll give you economic policies that free up the wealth creating energy of the American people and rocket us into recovery.  If only we had a few more of those guys...

On a blogger call today Senator Coburn and Representatives Nunes and Ryan discussed their alternative health care plan entitled 'Patients' Choice Act.' Representative Nunes noted that the Obama administration has yet to release any of the details of the plan that it is already starting to promote. Summaries of the Patients' Choice Act as well as additional information are given on Representative Ryan's website.

“The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009,” transforms health care in America by strengthening the relationship between the patient and the doctor; using choice and competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs; and ensuring universal, affordable health care for all Americans. “The Patients’ Choice Act” promotes innovative, State-based solutions, along with fundamental reforms in the tax code, to give every American, regardless of employment status, age, or health condition, the ability and the resources to purchase health insurance. The comprehensive legislation includes concrete prevention and transparency initiatives, long overdue reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, investments in wellness programs and health IT, and more.

Republican Health Care Alternative, Patients' Choice Act

New polling data released yesterday shows the majority of the American public supports a Bush Administration regulation protecting the conscience rights of health care providers, including doctors and nurses, who object to participating in controversial procedures such as abortion and sterilization.

The poll found overwhelming support for a patient’s right to seek care from a doctor who agrees with them on sensitive moral issues surrounding their health. But the apparent divide between Washington and the American people on this important issue couldn’t be greater. The Obama Administration wants to rescind federal regulations known as "conscience protections." Today is the final day to register a comment (click here to leave yours).

The poll, which surveyed 800 American adults of both political parties and independents (39% Democrats, 33% Republican, and 22% Independent), found 87% of Americans believe it is important to “make sure that health care professionals are not forced to participate in procedures and practices to which they have moral objections.” The results held true across the ideological and partisan lines, as 78% of Americans describing themselves as “pro-choice” supported health care provider conscience protections.

While the United States has a long tradition of protecting individual conscience rights stretching from the First Amendment to laws protecting conscientious objectors in time of war, Americans’ views on health care provider conscience rights are as much rooted in self-interest as they are in altruism towards doctors: 88% of Americans surveyed said it is important to them that they hold a similar set of morals as their doctors, nurses, and other health care providers.

Without strong protection of conscience rights for health care providers, Americans know their health care—both in access to and quality of care—will suffer, as faith-based doctors and other professionals leave the profession rather than be forced to violate their conscience.

Thorny issues of morality and ethics abound in health care, ranging from the beginning of life (abortion, in vitro fertilization, etc) to the end of life (physician-assisted suicide, advance directives, etc). Patients have a right to see a doctor of their choosing, without fear of government intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship. Patients and their families have the right to have tough conversations about, for example, life support for themselves or their loved one, with a medical professional that shares their beliefs surrounding end-of-life care. The farther government intrudes in these deeply personal issues by compelling doctors to violate their conscience, the more budgets and balance sheets will replace compassion and caring.

Failure to protect conscience rights for health care providers will have a direct, negative effect on patients’ ability to get the care they need. For example, Catholic hospitals alone make up about 20% of all hospitals in the country and serve over 5.5 million patients a year. If these institutions’ conscience rights are not protected, they could be forced to shut their doors or reduce services. Undoubtedly, poor and rural patients served by these institutions will suffer the most in such a scenario.

In spite of this, the Obama Administration and Congress seem intent on rolling back conscience protections in health care. After less than two months in office, the Obama Administration proposed to eliminate the conscience protection regulation. Last Friday, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have included conscience protections in President Obama’s $634 billion “down payment” for health care reform. The amendment, offered by Senator Tom Coburn, himself a doctor, would have prohibited government coercion of patients to enroll in specific health insurance plans or to see pre-selected health care providers. Given the chance, the Senate said “no” to giving patients freedom to choose a doctor that shares their beliefs on important moral and ethical issues.

While the American people strongly support conscience rights and freedom of choice in health care, Congress and the Obama Administration are moving rapidly in the opposite direction: toward increased government intrusion into Americans’ most private and personal health care decisions.

The public has until midnight tonight to let the Department of Health and Human Services know its support of conscience rights in the health care work place. Visit ADoctorsRight.com to register your comment with HHS today.

The office of Senator Tom Coburn (R-Ok.) released a report of outrageous pork and wasteful programs. The government spent $15,000 to provide voicemail to the homeless in Ohio and $6,000 for a Mermaid Mural in Racine.

The report is ironic, as if it was from another time that seems long ago, when the petty nickel and dime conniving politicians mattered, or when Tom Coburn was a paragon of fiscal conservatism.

I try not to be harsh, and I can’t advocate throwing Coburn under the bus, but I find myself unable to view him in the same light as I once did. My reason: one vote: for a $700 billion bailout of the financial sector.I can eventually forgive that vote, or will try. But Coburn’s complaining about the penny anny stuff in Washington strikes me as hypocritical. The $700 billion bailout money could provide homeless people in Ohio voice mail for 46.7 million years, or could be used to paint more than 116 million murals.

This past year has been a difficult one for conservatives. I never imagined it would end with me angry at Tom Coburn. The top movie of 2008 was the Batman sequel, “The Dark Night,” and it’s a movie this situation relates to.

For those who didn’t see the movie, this may come as somewhat of a spoiler. For those who did, the statement will be controversial. In the Dark Knight, the Joker won. The Joker’s goal, if you could call it that, wasn’t the theft of money, or the killing of hundreds, it was simply the creation of moral anarchy. By the end of the movie, the Joker’s efforts had paid off. Each of the three “good guys”: Commissioner Gordon, Batman, and District Attorney Harvey Dent, had clearly become compromised.

Likewise, moral confusion seems to be the order of the day in the auto bailout. This confusion is best summed up by George W. Bush’s statement, “I abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” Yes, that is a direct quote.

The taint is everywhere in Congress. Congressman John Campbell (R-Ca.), who like Coburn is a well-known anti-pork crusader, voted yes on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), aka the $700 billion bailout, and present on the auto bailout. Congressman stalwart John Shadegg (R-AZ), and conservative Tom Tancredo (R-Co.) also supported TARP.

Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mi.) thundered on the floor of the house, arguing that the federal treasury should not be raided, and that the TARP bailout undermined our liberty. Said McCotter, "In the Bolshevik Revolution, the slogan was 'Peace, land, and bread.’ Today, you are being asked to choose between bread and freedom. I suggest the people on Main Street have said they prefer their freedom, and I am with them."

McCotter’s reaction to President Bush’s auto bailout, which was likely in violation of the terms of the original TARP legislation? "I sincerely thank [President Bush] for his decisive action in this dire time for our community and the auto industry.” Apparently McCotter has switched to the side of land and bread.

Unlike in the Dark Knight, some heroes have emerged uncompromised in the face of this insanity. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC.) said “no” to both bailouts, as did Congressman Mike Pence (R-In.) Some people who conservatives rarely counted as heroes, such as Senator Richard Shelby (R-Al.), who was named porker of the month earlier this year by Citizens Against Government Waste, led on the issue of opposing bailouts.

Yet, at the end of the day, the liberal Jokers on Capitol Hill won the day. They’ve created fiscal anarchy on the right. The conservative arguments against government intervention in other areas of life have been smashed to bits by conservatives supporting government intervention. Liberals have been attacking Republicans who supported TARP, but oppose bailing out the auto industry as hypocrites who think banks are worthy of being bailed out, but blue collar workers aren’t. And they’ve got a point.

President Bush and Senator McCain put us in the business of picking winners and losers. The Democrats will argue, “If Citibank and AIG can be winners, why not you? Why are we spending money to bailout these clowns while millions of Americans don’t have health care?” Defining yourself as the party of limited government is great. Defining yourself as the party that will only use big government to help the rich is suicidal.

And how can we hold the new president to following the rule of law when this president has turned a program that was supposed to purchase troubled securities into a program that bought stocks in not only troubled banks, but not so troubled banks, and finally into a program that purchases stock in troubled carmakers (never mind that one of the TARP bill’s chief sponsors has said flat out that Bush has no right to do this.)

Our conservative movement is fractured, fragmented, and undermined through the actions of its leaders. A sledgehammer has been taken to our most sacrosanct economic principles. And you can’t help but feel that somewhere a demented clown is smiling. 

I could hardly imagine a more appropriate day for this WSJ op-ed by Tom Coburn to come out than on The Next Right's launch day. Sen. Coburn encapsulates what many here already believe: the Right needs to help itself before we can start winning again: 

Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans.

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn't good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and "compassionate conservatism." If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority.

Read the whole thing.