December last year I wrote a blog post in which I made the case that in the last several decades Republicans have more and more become pale versions of Democrats. I pointed out that while, during an election season at least, Republicans often use the rhetoric of protecting rights and limited government when it comes time to actually govern their policies are not very different from those of the Democrats. You can check the original post to see my arguments, which I still stand by.

One of the comments this post received was from Joe Benning, Republican Vermont State Senator for Caledonia-Orange Counties. He took exception to my calling Republicans, especially in Vermont, Democrats-Lite. In part he said:

We have repeatedly said we support the following core values of the Republican Party: a free market economy, low taxes, limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility. That was the message of Governor Christie, which is why we invited him to Vermont.

Just six months after making this statement it appears that his dedication to these principles is not as strong as he would have people believe. Since writing the post I have heard him make statements that caused me to doubt his claims, such as one in January supporting a national plan for universal health insurance and more recently claiming a “right to know” when speaking in support of Vermont’s new GMO labelling law. (The right to know is a complete equivocation on what rights actually are, but that is a topic for another post.) He authored an op-ed that appeared in the Caledonian Record on June 24^th that confirmed for me that he either does not understand these principles or he does not actually believe in and support them.

His op-ed, titled “Governor, It’s Time for a Plan A,” dealt with Governor Shumlin’s pushing ahead with the plan for Vermont’s single payer health care system. He rightly points out the vast cost of the proposed system, estimated to result in a 40-50% increase over the current spending of the state, problems with the state-run Obamacare exchange and the multiple missed legal deadlines in establishing the single-payer system.

Where he reveals his underlying principles, or lack thereof, is when he leaves the problems of the current plan and moves on to what he calls for, a return to “Plan A” – affordable, universal health insurance disconnected from employment. He proceeds to offer suggestions for three steps towards achieving these goals. I have written about the fact that it was previous government interventions in health insurance that led to exactly the issues, especially the linking of insurance to employment, that this new government intervention is supposed to fix, so I am skeptical from the start that further government intervention will solve the problem.

First, he suggests that Vermont give up the scheme to leverage Obamacare to help pay for the single-payer system and “run the exchange the way the Obama administration intended.” So Obamacare – a system where the government dictates to insurance companies what levels of coverage they must offer (whether the customer needs it or not), determines what price can be charged, sets the time period when companies can sell the insurance, determines how much can be spent (i.e., rationing by another name), forces individuals to buy insurance of a given type (e.g. middle aged people cannot generally buy just catastrophic (i.e., real) insurance) and orders companies of a certain size to provide insurance or face a penalty– is apparently something the Senator now supports. If someone can find the free market economy, limited government and individual liberty here I would gladly have it pointed out to me as I fail to see it.

His second suggestion is to direct our federal delegation to come up with a national plan to expand “Medicare in increments until it covers the entire population; everybody in, nobody out” to be paid for by a national sales tax. As there is no mention of such a sales tax replacing any existing taxes, we must assume this will result in higher taxes.

Let us keep in mind that Medicare is a system plagued by corruption from which doctors are already leaving in increasing numbers or restricting the number of Medicare patients they will accept. Two primary reasons for doctors leaving the system are the excessive regulations and the low reimbursement rates in the program. These rates are actually higher than they should be under existing laws which are intended to control costs.  These laws are routinely delayed every year by a congress afraid of the political consequences of cutting those payments.

Currently Medicare covers about 50 million people (in 2012) which will increase 5 fold to 316 million if the system was expanded to “everyone in, nobody out” as Senator Benning suggests. If the necessity of keeping the system affordable results in the legislated cuts to physician reimbursement, which would seem to be necessary, how many more doctors may leave the system altogether? Would the federal government then seek to require doctors to accept Medicare patients, even if they lose money doing so, as a condition of being licensed to practice medicine as Massachusetts tried to do in 2010 after their adoption of RomneyCare?

Further, unless Obamacare is repealed, which is unlikely, the Independent Payment Advisory Board will still exist. The purpose of the IPAB is to make “recommendations to slow the growth in national health expenditures.” Recommendations is a bit of a euphemism as their recommendations become law unless Congress passes a law providing for an equal level of savings, and these recommendations are not subject to veto or judicial appeal. How would the IPAB achieve their goal of slowing the rate of growth? By setting reimbursement rates for Medicare, which with Senator Benning’s suggestion would cover everyone. They would effectively determine what drugs, procedures and etc are available simply by setting reimbursement rates such that no one can afford to use them. Even former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has stated that this is rationing by another name.

Again, if you can find the free market economy, limited government, individual liberty and low taxes here I would gladly have it pointed out to me.

His final suggestion actually does have one sliver of a good idea – fire CGI, the company that the state has paid millions of dollars for a non-working website. The idea of hiring a Vermont company to do the work of registering people for the Exchange is essentially meaningless fluff seemingly intended to appeal to the collectivists who urge people to “buy Vermont” simply because the product is made in Vermont.  Would it really be better if the company helping to violate our rights is based in Vermont and staffed by our friends and neighbors?

Senator Benning ends his op-ed by saying “I won’t pretend these steps provide all the answers, but we desperately need a new direction for this conversation.” I fail to see what is “new” about the direction his steps point in. As I have shown above, it seems that his essential complaint of the Shumlin plan is that it is limited to the state level and he would prefer to see it at a national one. Other than shifting the burden of paying for the system from a state that cannot afford it to a country that cannot afford it, what is the essential difference? And if we take the national point of view, how is it different from the goal of the Democrat Party?

Concepts, and the words that represent them, are man’s means of dealing mentally with more than is immediately available to his senses. They are formed by integrating items in reality by an essential characteristic, which also serves to differentiate them from other things. For example, the shape of all tables is what allows us to integrate them, see them as similar, as well as to differentiate them from chairs and beds. If the suggestions given here are what pass in Vermont for support of Republican principles, then the very concept “Republican” soon will cease to have any meaning in Vermont as there is no essential difference between it and the concept Democrat.