Renee Ellmers

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) today sat down with Kaiser Health News to discuss her proposal to repeal and replace the health care reform law. However, Ellmers was unable to name a single policy alternative to the reform law.

The Tea Party-favorite recently defended her decision to take a taxpayer-subsidized health care plan because she said that her $174,000 annual salary is too little to live on in Washington DC, and also opposes mandatory coverage for maternity care and pre-existing conditions.

Ellmers, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Health and Technology, was unable to muster a single specific policy proposal when asked, even though she insists that Republicans have “plenty of solutions.” She also told Kaiser that she wants to reconsider the reform law’s change to allow young dependents to stay on their parent’s plan until they are 26 years old, and also falsely claims that the reform law represents a “government takeover of health care,” as the plan actually preserves the private health care insurance system:

Q. You voted to repeal the health care law in the House, but that effort has stalled in the Senate. Do you think the American people are going to get tired of continuing to debate health care, especially if they want to see more movement on jobs and the economy?

A. I am sure it will be going to the Supreme Court and will be shot down as unconstitutional. I don't think the American people are going to get tired of it because they see that this is a massive takeover of government in health care and every other aspect of their lives.

Q. If the health care law is repealed, do you think that people might get frustrated with not having some of the consumer protections such as children covered up until the age of 26 or help for seniors in the doughnut hole?

A. There again, we need to put in place patient-centered reforms. I don't know that children need to be covered all the way up until age 26. But it has to be in the free market. The problem is we are losing the ability to make choices. That is your choice and this is the problem. We are losing the ability to make choices.

Q. There has been some criticism that Republicans don't have a unified alternative. What is your strategy moving forward?

A. No. See, that is completely untrue. That is the rhetoric. We have plenty of solutions.

Q. Like what, specifically?

A. We have got to get the Obama plan out of the way. Again, we have already voted to repeal. We are working on the provision to get rid of the 1099 (reporting requirement for business purchases). There are plenty of other aspects of the health care bill that fall apart when one piece of the puzzle is taken out, so this is what we are doing. We are moving forward on this whether or not the Democrats and the Senate or the president are coming along.

I think we have made our message very clear. I think the American people hear that message. Overwhelmingly, the American people want this health care situation addressed. They want it addressed in the free market. The want it addressed where they can make their decisions for their own families and not have the president and the government make it for them.

Live Action’s ongoing smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, where actors playing a pimp and a prostitute used hidden cameras to try to dupe clinic staffers into a sex trafficking ring, has ran into numerous hurdles. The radical group’s videos have found to be heavily doctored and actually show clinic workers acting properly and lawfully. In fact, before Live Action even released the edited tapes, Planned Parenthood alerted the FBI about visitors who sought advice for “underage girls who were part of a sex trafficking ring.” Live Action is led by anti-choice radical Lila Rose, who previously collaborated with notorious trickster James O’Keefe and likes to compare herself to Martin Luther King Jr. Rose also has a long history of deceptively editing videos.

But the Religious Right and leading Republicans have increasingly embraced Rose and her hoax videos, and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is using the discredited videos to promote his bill that would end federal funding of Planned Parenthood, imperiling women’s health services.

Tomorrow, leading GOP congressmen plan to join Rose and Pence to demand Congress strip Planned Parenthood of its funding. Congressmen Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Virginia Foxx (R-NC) , Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) , Renee Ellmers (R-NC), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY), and Andy Harris (R-MD) will speak with Rose and Pence, along with Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony List and Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America.

All of the Congressmen mentioned have a long history with extreme anti-choice activism:

Schmidt railed against reproductive rights in a speech to 1st graders in an elementary school; Buerkle served as the spokesperson for the extreme group Operation Rescue; Hartzler backed bills that would compel women seeking an abortion to view their sonograms and even supported legislation that would force the state to file murder charges against women and their doctors if they performed a late-term abortion; Foxx wants to ban emergency contraception like RU-486 and Ella; Harris wanted to allow pharmacists to refuse contraception to customers and challenged a moderate pro-choice Republican incumbent in 2008, and Ellmers is an avowed opponent of legal abortion who recently justified receiving taxpayer-subsidized health care by claiming that Washington DC is too expensive to live in with a $174,000 per year salary, while pushing to defund health services for low-income women.

But having such an extreme group of anti-choice congressmen standing with Rose is no surprise, as Rose herself has called for abortions to “be done in the public square.”

North Carolina’s freshman Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, last featured in RWW’s The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress, refers to herself as a “product of the Tea Party” and even opposes mandating that insurance companies cover matenity care because it is “very costly.” Despite her staunch hostility to the Democrats’ “imperial ruling class attitude” and the “socialistic form of government,” Ellmers has decided to take taxpayer-subsidized health care plan because of the high cost of living in Washington DC. Apparently, the Congresswoman’s $174,000 annual salary isn’t enough to live part-time in the nation’s capital without taxpayer-funded health insurance:

Appearing on a WPTF radio call-in show Monday, Ellmers was asked by a caller whether she intended to participate in "that luxury plan" offered to members of Congress.

Ellmers responded that she signed up for a Blue Cross, Blue Shield federal employees plan, one of the options offered to members of Congress.

"Unfortunately, being here in Washington is very expensive," Ellmers said. "Yes, we do have a salary, and we do have benefits. It costs a lot of money to be here. I've signed on to the private plan, just like so many in America are on. "The benefit is available to me. People need to understand out there, it costs a lot of money to be here in Congress."

Ellmers, a nurse who is married to a physician, makes a congressional salary of $174,000 per year.

While Ellmers believes that residents of Washington DC who don’t have health insurance (and most likely earn less than $174,000) shouldn’t receive any government assistance to receive coverage whatsoever, she is fine with taxpayer-funded health insurance for herself.

Ellmers recently rejected an invitation by President Obama, who she likened to “Louis XIV, the Sun King,” to attend a reception at the White House for all new members of Congress “because she chose not to go.”