Obamacare not dead yet

Although it's on life-support, Obamacare is not dead, The Heritage Foundation's Brian Darling warns. There are some who still plan to "forge forward and pass [it] by any means necessary."

In the wake of Republican Scott Brown's astounding victory in deep-blue Massachusetts last week, Obamacare proponents have been hard-pressed for ways to pass their unpopular health care reform bill.

Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner provides his own assessment of the current state of our union, including health care. He describes the Left's "signature health care reform initiative [as] a colossal missed opportunity."

Shortly after Brown's victory, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) admitted that she doesn't have enough votes to pass the Senate bill by a simple majority. Yet the Left's solution, Politico reports, is "giving a sweeping reform bill one more try," even as some Democrats favor a scaled-back proposal.

Meanwhile, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has proposed legislation that would eliminate the filibuster, which requires 60 Senators to agree to end debate before a vote can occur. Members of both parties have used this procedural hurdle to slow or block Senate action, including most notably the health care legislation.

But these "solutions" don't address the core concerns the American people have with Obamacare.

"The President and Congress are facing a fork in the road," writes Darling. Conservatives should take advantage of this temporary lull to represent the voice of real, bipartisan reform.

Heritage health care expert Nina Owcharenko lays out what these principled reforms would include:

• Treat All Insurance the Same. The same tax breaks given to employer-provided health coverage should be applied to insurance plans purchased by individuals. Ideally, Congress would implement a system of universal tax credits.

• Reform Existing Health Care Programs. Spending on current health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid is growing out of control. They are bankrupting our nation at an accelerating pace, and expanding them, as the Left’s health care bills would do, would only exacerbate the financial burden on taxpayers. Without significant reform, the aging of the U.S. population and rapidly rising health care costs will dramatically increase federal entitlement spending in coming years.

• Use Federalism, Not One-Size-Fits-All. States are the best place to test ideas. And because health care needs vary greatly across the country, reform should not entail a one-size fits all package. “Congress should embrace a federal-state partnership that would preserve diversity in the states,” suggests Owcharenko. “The states' role would be to devise the best ways to achieve common national goals--for example, to establish a mechanism for portability.”

These reforms would help to address the many problems with our existing health care system without expanding the size and scope of the federal government. Plus, they would likely achieve bipartisan support because they honor the President's promises not to increase the deficit or raise taxes on the middle class. Both the current House and Senate bills break these promises.

Conservatives should seize this opportunity to truly reform America's health care system -- and it really does need reform -- in a manner that respects individual liberty and boosts, not breaks, our economy.