Health Care

Rising health care costs continue to wreak havoc with American family budgets and they play an enormous role in our impending fiscal crisis.  These rising costs continue to price people out of the insurance market.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has stated that our total national healthcare spending will double over the next ten years and will soon account for more than 20% of our total economy.  In part due to these skyrocketing costs, Medicare and Medicaid have become unsustainable.  As part of a larger health reform package, we must reform these important safety net programs so they will remain viable for future generations.

We need to rethink the way we provide health care in the United States.  Congressional Democrats would prefer to put government in charge of health care, but this would only result in shortages and rationing, as we’ve seen in nations that employ such systems.  Instead, Americans need to adopt an open, less bureaucratic system that only the free market can present.  Health care needs to be placed in the hands of patients and their doctors, not lawyers and bureaucrats.  The American people need to have choices in their health care, not decisions made for them by Washington politicians who mandate a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores individual circumstances.

Simply put, our health care system is broken and bigger government will not and cannot fix it.  We need transparency within the system to allow Americans to know exactly what they’re getting for their hard earned money.  Today, it’s almost impossible to get reliable information about what a particular course of treatment will cost, or which providers offer the best quality care.  By making our health care system more transparent, competition will increase, costs will go down, and the American people will be the beneficiaries.  The philosophies outlined below are essential to creating real reform and I believe that by implementing them we can achieve fundamental change in the way we do business in health care.

• Put patients first.  At the most basic level, any health care reform must allow decisions to be made by patients and their doctors, with minimal interference from insurers, the government, or other third parties.  Individuals should be able to choose different coverage options to meet their personal needs.  And patients must have access to information about the quality and cost of different medical treatments.

• Fairness for all Americans.  The tax code is fundamentally unfair in the way it treats health care.  If you get health insurance from your employer, you receive an unlimited tax exclusion.  But if you are self-employed or work for a company that doesn’t offer health benefits, you get little or no tax benefit.  This system creates two major problems:  First, it drives up the overall cost of health insurance by creating an incentive for some employers to offer extremely generous "Cadillac" plans.  Second, it makes it very difficult and costly for those without employer-provided insurance to buy coverage on their own.  We must replace the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance with a more equitable tax treatment that gives everyone with health insurance – whether they buy it on the open market or get it from their employer – the same benefit. 

• Individual freedom.  People need greater freedom in shopping for health insurance.  They shouldn't be limited to buying health insurance in their own state.  And they shouldn't be forced to stay in a job they don't like just because they want to keep their health care.  They should be able to purchase a plan that suits their needs, and be able to take it with them when they change jobs. 

• Personal responsibility.  It's often much less expensive to treat a health problem early on, rather than waiting for it to become serious.  Health care reform should provide incentives -- not mandates -- for people to take more responsibility for their own health care by getting regular checkups and practicing healthy lifestyles.  While we must preserve access to justice for legitimate victims of medical malpractice, it's imperative that we crack down on frivolous lawsuits that are driving up the cost of health care.

• Harnessing innovation to control costs.  Too often, Congress has blocked the development of promising new health care innovations.  New and innovative ways of delivering health care services, from ambulatory surgical centers to specialty hospitals to retail clinics, should be encouraged, not stifled by excessive regulations.

• Harnessing technology to control costs.  Studies indicate that if we made all medical records electronic, instead of keeping them on paper, we could save more than $100 billion per year in health care costs while improving quality.  Information technology can also be used to improve transparency in health care, allowing consumers to access better information on the price of health care services and the quality of providers.  Congress can use Medicare to create incentives for providers to employ technology and report price and quality data.