Issues
Health Care
One of my top priorities is to continue helping families get the health care they need, including a prescription drug benefit program and home health care, and more community health centers. I am committed to reforms that will restore sanity to our health care system, making health care affordable and available to all who need it. We must reform the medical liability insurance system to control costs and allow physicians to continue practicing. We should also help small businesses across the country provide health insurance to their workers and dependents by pooling together and access health insurance.
Current Health Care Reform Debate
I have heard from folks across Missouri faced with rising premiums and higher health care costs, as well as hospitals, doctors and other health care providers struggling with the rising costs of treating the uninsured, and I agree that we need reform. To achieve real reform, Republicans and Democrats must work together on solutions that lower the cost of health care, increase access for all Americans, improve the quality of patient care, and address the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Medicaid.
Unfortunately, Democrats in Washington want to pass legislation that would vastly expand the role of government in health care. After being written behind closed doors for six weeks, Sen. Reid finally unveiled his health care bill to the Senate and the American people. Unfortunately, all Sen. Reid had to offer was 2,074 pages of federal bureaucracy that will cost more than $2 trillion once fully implemented and will increase health care costs, raise taxes and cut Medicare benefits for seniors. This bill will also force Americans into a government run health care plan, ration care and limit access to life-saving treatments, and put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor.
The Reid bill includes gimmicks to hide from Americans the true costs of their bill, including a great stunt to push back implementation of major parts of reform until 2014 but start raising taxes and cutting Medicare immediately. This allows Sen. Reid to hide the true cost of the bill by collecting money up front to pay for the countless new and very expensive programs and services later. Claiming “savings” of $130 billion by recording taxes over 10 years and only scoring costs over 6 years would get a private business man in jail.
This is not the kind of reform the American people asked Congress for. We don’t need a costly government overhaul of health care to give the American people what they want. There are several bipartisan reforms that can make a difference right now and bring down the cost of health care for Missourians.
I support common sense solutions that will lower health care costs such as:
· Ending junk lawsuits which would save tens of billions, curb defensive medicine and increase access to care
· Encouraging competition by allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines to lower costs
· Allowing small businesses to pool together to offer their employees health insurance at lower cost
· Giving individuals tax equity
· Common sense insurance reforms that would increase access and lower costs
· Investing in prevention and wellness programs, like the ones that have been so successful in holding costs down at major businesses like Safeway
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