Health
![Health professional examining a young patient. Health professional examining a young patient.](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20121016224506im_/http://black.house.gov/sites/black.house.gov/files/styles/section_front_boilerplate/public/health.jpg)
By enacting common sense solutions, we can ensure that everyone has equal access to high-quality, affordable health care.
The health care reform law passed last Congress promised to address the issue of rapidly rising costs and the inaccessibility to health care that many Americans face. However, in the two years since this bill passed, health care reform has shown to do neither. Instead this partisan bill created job-killing taxes for American small businesses and a new entitlement program that will cost trillions of dollars in the coming decades, further exacerbating the already massive federal debt. As a nurse for over 40 years I know that health care decisions are best left in the hands of patients and their health care providers, not Washington bureaucrats.
For me, the health care debate is all too familiar- a similar program, called TennCare, failed in Tennessee just 15 years ago. Initial cost estimates for TennCare were low, but for 10 years we watched our Medicaid program’s cost grow unsustainably to where it almost bankrupted our Tennessee.
As we move forward it is imperative that we enact market-based reforms which will lower costs and increase access to quality health care for all citizens. By enacting common sense solutions like allowing patients to purchase health insurance across state lines, creating high risk pools for those with preexisting conditions and the enactment of tort reform, we can ensure that everyone has equal access to high-quality, affordable health care.