The typical complaint that supposedly justifies the Democratic Party’s health care plan is the “fact” that the Republican Party does not have a plan of its own.  This supposed “fact” is not true.  At least to some extent, this “fact” is merely an often repeated lie.  For example, I got a comment from another blogger (here), Henryk A. Kowalczyk, requesting that I check out his article on the Huffington Post (here).   How does Henryk article begin?

The House health care overhaul bill passed not because Democrats prepared a good proposal but because Republicans showed an amazing inability to present a viable alternative.

Henryk statement is simply untrue.  Whether Henryk is simply ill-informed, I do not know, but I can you tell you that the Republican Party has presented a viable alternative.  The party’s plan is at this website.

GOP.gov

The specifics, even the proposed legislation, is right here (See here for the proposed bill.).  Nonetheless, the Democratic Party is totally unwilling to allow the Republican Party’s proposals to go forward.  Instead, the Democratic Party wants to adopt 2000 pages of pure socialism.

So why don’t we know about the Republican Party’s alternative?  I can think of two reasons in particular.

• Much of the corporate news media wants to say nothing positive about Republicans.
• The Republican National Committee’s website, GOP.com, spends too much effort discrediting the Democrats and not enough advertising what Republicans stand for.  For example, the Health Care Issues page really does not say anything.  To find out where Republicans stand on the health care issue, we have to search the web site (see here).   Even then, we have to check out the third hit before we find out what Republicans want to do.  That is shooting yourself in the foot.

Is the Republican Party’s plan/bill better than the Democratic Party’s plan/bill?  The Republican Party’s proposed bill is 219 pages long (as opposed to an almost 2000 page Democrat bill).  Since the devil is generally found in the details, I like that.  There is at least some chance I could read the Republican Party’s plan, and given time I may read much of it.

Suffice to say that I like the general principles (see here), but I really would prefer that the Federal Government just get out-of-the-way.  I do not trust either Republicans or Democrats not to gum our health care system.  Instead of telling the states how to spend Federal funds, I wish the Federal Government would just mind its own business (Where is our health care mentioned in the Constitution?).  What the Federal Government can obviously do is require the states to allow health care providers to compete across state lines, and the proposed bill does do that.