What's our Plan?

You wouldn't necessarily expect the CEO of Whole Foods, possibly the official store of the crunchy granola left, would come out and provide us with a template for a common sense, free market approach to health care reform that makes far, far more sense than the socialized medicine seen in Obama care. But John Mackey does that in the Wall Street Journal with a plan that emphasizes basic ideas such as tax fairness on health plan, removal of barriers for buying coverage across state lines (one of my pet peeves), tort reform, Medicare reform, and cost transparency. It its one of the more articulate alternative solutions that have been put forth recently.

And I think that's one of the more frustrating things for me recently. Certainly, the protests that we have seen pop up against Obamacare and the Democrats attempt at destroying free market health care are a positive sign, and the fact that public support for Obamacare has dropped 21 percent in the past four weeks is a positive sign that the public is getting the message on this regard.

But what alternatives are we as conservatives and Republicans presenting to the American public? Both left and right agree that the current health care system in this country is in major need of reformation. And mainstream Americans agree that the helath plan put forth by Obama and Congressional Democrats is risky, dangerous, and unwise.

So why is our side not offering more alternatives?

There are times when it is proper to stand back and say "no." But conservatives have an opportunity here to present a conservative vision of health care reform in this country. But seem to be more concerned saying no than we are with providing an alternative. Since liberal Democrats tend to be the party of emotion and conservative Republicans tend to be the party of ideas, we are missing an opportunity in this health care debate not only to position ourselves better to win elections in 2010, but an opportunity to build a broad coalition across party lines on major conservative principles that appeal to the majority of American citizens. The ball is on the tee for us, but it doesn't seem like we are ready to

Not a sermon, just a thought....