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To: Peter Dierks who wrote (34238)	3/28/2009 10:14:04 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Business Beats Card Check—For Now But can Corporate America stay united? MARCH 26, 2009, 11:55 P.M. ET The business community is dancing a victory jig over Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's announcement that he'll provide the crucial vote to stop Big Labor's top priority, the "card check" bill. Fair enough, though the real test of corporate America is yet to come. Mr. Specter has been in the hot seat, the one Republican who had previously voted to debate card check -- legislation that would eliminate secret ballots in union elections. Up for re-election next year in a big union state, he was under intense pressure to again help his labor allies by giving Democrats the filibuster-breaking vote. He might have done it, too. Instead, the business community managed something it has not managed in years: unity. Hundreds of companies, industry groups and organizations made clear that should he support the bill, an unwavering business front would expend all its resources to elect a different Republican in next year's primary. They were able to back up that threat in part because they'd successfully turned what had been a dry question of labor law into an emotional, grass-roots issue. For more than a year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups have doggedly run ads and held events to explain card check to voters. Surveys show that the more Americans know about the bill's antidemocratic provisions, the more they hate it. That public awareness had allowed Club for Growth President Pat Toomey -- who in 2004 narrowly lost a primary to Mr. Specter -- to start beating the senator with card check in anticipation of a rematch. A Quinnipiac poll this week showed the senator trailing Mr. Toomey 27% to 41% in a matchup. The conservative base is angry over Mr. Specter's vote for the Obama stimulus, but card check wasn't helping. Meanwhile, the bill's introduction in Congress set off a frenzy for Mr. Specter's vote, and unions became so desperate that Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President William George publicly crowed that he had promised to change Democrats into Republicans for the primary to help Mr. Specter win. Faced with the possibility that he might now be accused of being bought off, Mr. Specter finally wrote off the legislation. In theory, his decision to join his 40 GOP colleagues in a filibuster kills the bill. In reality, the business community just moved into a far more dangerous phase. Big Labor spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats and get card check; it won't give up. And the unions know the corporate world has a history of fracturing. All of which explains why, in the past weeks, the new talking point is "compromise." The union goal is to gin up support for a watered-down version of "card check," one that nervous Senate Democrats such as Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln or Colorado's Michael Bennet (both up for election) -- as well as a Republican or two -- would feel comfortable putting on the floor for debate. Once the unions fly past a filibuster, they could then "fix" the bill back to the way they like it. To make this strategy work, the unions need some in the business community to provide political cover to Senate supporters. Democrats took their first stab at this late last week, when news leaked that the CEOs of three companies -- Whole Foods, Starbucks and Costco -- were breaking with the rest of the business world to support some sort of compromise, although the details were vague. The point man was former Clinton counsel Lanny Davis, who remains tight with this White House. The objective was to present a "bipartisan" plan, lure other nervous businesses into discussions, and thus inspire a string of defections. To corporate America's credit, it didn't take the bait. Instead the anti-card-check forces united to publicly scream "no compromise." At the same time, left-leaning blogs, congressmen and unions themselves began bashing the group for agreeing to negotiate. By the time the chastened group actually held its press call, it wasn't embracing a compromise so much as a general set of principles -- which helpfully included support for the secret ballot. "Talk of a compromise at this stage is like giving away runs in the ninth inning," says Rhonda Bentz of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace. In recent years, standard operating procedure has been for the business world to split apart in pursuit of self-interest or to get cold feet. Card check has so far been an exception, but the pressure will only increase. Left-leaning labor lawyers and lobbyists keep whispering in their corporate clients' ears that card check will indeed pass, and that they'd better cut a deal while they can. Senate Democrats are testing the waters with their home-state business communities, looking to horse trade other goodies in return for card-check indulgence. These tactics have worked in the past. But the lesson of card check so far is that, united, the business world still wields extraordinary clout. So extraordinary that it has managed to bottle up Big Labor's top priority in a town now run exclusively by labor's Democratic patrons. Business's continued unity, or lack of it, will decide what happens next. Write to kim@wsj.com online.wsj.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (34238)	10/5/2009 11:12:02 PM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

The Conservative Case for Reform By Bobby Jindal Monday, October 5, 2009 A majority of so-called Republican strategists believe that health care is a Democratic issue. They are wrong; health care is an American issue, and the Republican Party has an opportunity to demonstrate that conservative principles work when applied to real-world problems. But memo to Washington: The debate on health care has moved on. Democratic plans for a government takeover are passé. The people don't want it. Believe the polls, the town halls, the voters. Only Democrats in Washington would propose new taxes on businesses and families in the middle of a recession, $900 billion in new spending at a time of record deficits, and increased taxes on health insurance and products to reduce health-care costs. Washington is the only place in the country that doesn't realize that this debate is over. Democrats may march forward anyway, but they will do so without the people, and at their own peril. Yet hope for meaningful reform need not be lost. Only two things need to happen. First, Democrats have to give up on their grand experiment and get serious about bipartisan solutions. Second, Republicans have to join the battle of ideas. To be clear, the Republicans in Congress who have led the opposition to the Obama-Pelosi vision of health-care reform have done the right thing for our country. If they had rolled over, the results could have been devastating for our health-care system and our nation's budget. But Republicans must shift gears. Conservatives should seize the mantle of reform and lead. Conservatives either genuinely believe that conservative principles will work to solve real-world problems such as health care or they don't. I believe they will. The people do not want Republicans to offer their own thousand-page plan to overhaul health care, and that is not what the nation needs. So here are 10 ideas to increase the affordability and quality of health care. Some of these are buried within various Republican and Democratic plans that have been floated. They offer a path forward toward significant bipartisan reform. These proposals would require insurance companies to do their jobs and spread risk over large populations, restore patients' power to make their own health-care decisions, and focus our system on quality instead of activity. -- Voluntary purchasing pools: Give individuals and small businesses the opportunities that large businesses and the government have to seek lower insurance costs. -- Portability: As people change jobs or move across state lines, they change insurance plans. By allowing consumers to "own" their policies, insurers would have incentive to make more investments in prevention and in managing chronic conditions. -- Lawsuit reform: It makes no sense to ignore one of the biggest cost drivers in the system -- the cost of defensive medicine, largely driven by lawsuits. Worse, many doctors have stopped performing high-risk procedures for fear of liability. -- Require coverage of preexisting conditions: Insurance should not be least accessible when it is needed most. Companies should be incentivized to focus on delivering high-quality effective care, not to avoid covering the sick. -- Transparency and payment reform: Consumers have more information when choosing a car or restaurant than when selecting a health-care provider. Provider quality and cost should be plainly available to consumers, and payment systems should be based on outcomes, not volume. Today's system results in wide variations in treatment instead of the consistent application of best practices. We must reward efficiency and quality. -- Electronic medical records: The current system of paper records threatens patient privacy and leads to bad outcomes and higher costs. -- Tax-free health savings accounts: HSAs have helped reduce costs for employers and consumers. Some businesses have seen their costs decrease by double-digit percentages. But current regulations discourage individuals and small businesses from utilizing HSAs. -- Reward healthy lifestyle choices: Providing premium rebates and other incentives to people who make healthy choices or participate in management of their chronic diseases has been shown to reduce costs and improve health. -- Cover young adults: A large portion of the uninsured are people who cannot afford coverage after they have "aged out" of their parents' policies. Permitting young people to stay on their parents' plans longer would reduce the number of uninsured and keep healthy people in insurance risk pools -- helping to lower premiums for everyone. -- Refundable tax credits (for the uninsured and those who would benefit from greater flexibility of coverage): Redirecting some of the billions already spent on the uninsured will help make non-emergency care outside the emergency room affordable for millions and will provide choices of coverage through the private market rather than forcing people into a government-run system. We should trust American families to make choices for themselves while we ensure they have access to quality, affordable health care. In short, ideas matter. The public is interested in solutions that will improve America's health-care system, not dismantle it. Republicans can lead on this. The writer, a Republican, is governor of Louisiana. washingtonpost.com