Cassidy: GOP ideas unwanted

• By MARSHA SHULER
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Jul 1, 2009 - Page: 3B

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U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy asked constituents at a meeting Tuesday night to become involved in the federal health-care debate going on in Washington, D.C.

President Barack Obama has recently made health-care restructuring a top priority. Democratic and Republican congressmen are floating a variety of ideas.

Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, said the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives so control the debate that Republicans are not being included in the process.

“There’s no way a Republican alternative is going to be taken whole,” Cassidy said. “Frankly they don’t want our ideas. In some cases they think the philosophical divides are too great.”

Major provisions of a U.S. House bill would push individuals and employers to get coverage, stop insurance companies from denying coverage to the sick and create a government plan that would compete with private-sector insurance company offerings.

Cassidy is a member of the GOP Health-Care Task Force, the Congressional Doctor Caucus and the Congressional Health-Care Caucus.

He asked those attending the meeting to help him push an alternative to the plans being considered by the Democratic Party-controlled Congress.

“The people in this room can make a difference,” Cassidy told a crowd of about 150 attending an hourlong meeting at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge.

Obama wants to expand health-care coverage to nearly all of the nation’s 50 million uninsured. Its cost has been a major stumbling block as well as how the coverage would be provided.

The president’s plan has more governmental involvement than Republicans want. The GOP favors a plan that relies more on private industry, Cassidy said.

Cassidy has said in the past that he would like to see the government provide vouchers or tax credits to allow the uninsured to buy private insurance.

“Republicans are trying to get the message out; that is one of the reasons we are having this meeting,” said Cassidy, adding that GOP members of Congress are holding similar meetings across the country.

Cassidy said he called the health-care meeting during the congressional break because congress “is moving quickly” on health-care legislation.