Legislation & Issues
The health care system in America is broken. Costs are rising at an unacceptable rate—more than doubling over the last 10 years, which is nearly four times the rate of wage growth. Too many patients feel trapped by health care decisions dictated by insurers and HMOs. Too many doctors are torn between practicing medicine and practicing insurance. And some 47 million Americans worry what will happen to them or their children if they get sick.
As a physician, I am keenly aware that our country needs health care reform. I support comprehensive reform which would enable every American to enjoy health coverage, lower costs, increase patient choice, improve access and quality, and protect the patient-physician relationship.
Universal access to high quality health care is possible, and Americans are justified to expect it. We have the best doctors in the world…the best scientists in the world… the best hospitals in the world. Now America needs to build the best health care in the world. We need to empower patients, and reduce the power of government and insurance bureaucrats. Every American should be able to get the care they need.
We will move closest to this goal when we promote the same innovation and competition in health care that we see in every other American industry. America should achieve universal access in a way that puts individual Americans in charge of their own health care decisions. We need American solutions.
In May 2009, I introduced my own health care reform solution, the Patients’ Choice Act (S. 1099) which would accomplish these goals. The Patients’ Choice Act would put individuals in charge of their health care decisions and would increase access, affordability, and choice of health care plans. This proposal is a clear market-based reform that seeks to strengthen the relationship between the patient and the doctor.
Click here for a brief summary of S.1099, the Patients' Choice Act.
Click here for a section-by-section version the Patients' Choice Act.
Click here for a more comprehensive summary of the Patients' Choice Act.
Click here to view the Patients' Choice Act handout.
Click here for example scenarios of individual coverage under the Patients' Choice Act.
Click here for an alternative to an Individual Mandate and auto-enrollment under the Patients' Choice Act.
Click here for the Patients' Choice Act Q & A's section.
Let me briefly to highlight a few points:
• Americans save more money. The Patients’ Choice Act equalizes the tax treatment of health insurance and enables every American to buy health insurance with a tax credit, regardless of employment status, age, health condition or the resources to purchase health insurance. This means that about nine in 10 American households would see a tax cut, and for patients and families making under $250,000 annually, their health insurance premium costs would generally be lower. Employers would still be able to deduct from their taxes the cost of providing health insurance to their employees, but millions of Americans who do not currently receive health insurance would have real buying power.
• States offer solutions. The Patients’ Choice Act incentivizes states to establish State Exchanges, which would offer high-quality, affordable health insurance to all individuals, regardless of their employment status, age, health condition, or pre-existing conditions. Health insurance plans sold in a State Exchange would offer the high-quality health plans like Members of Congress receive.
• Seniors fare better. The Patients’ Choice Act protects seniors. Unlike some proposals being considered in Congress, my plan is not financed by arbitrary and drastic cuts to Medicare. As a practicing physician, I know how many seniors rely on Medicare and I am committed to reforming Medicare. My plan would significantly reduce the high rate of Medicare fraud compared to today’s practices. This policy change alone would improve Medicare’s solvency, ensure taxpayer dollars are not wasted, and help us keep our commitment to America’s seniors. My plan would also improve competition and value under Medicare Advantage, and allow seniors making healthy decisions to save more.
• No new spending, no new taxes. According to our estimates Patients’ Choice Act does not require new spending or new taxes. It is my intent to address our health care crisis my fixing incentivizes in the system and reallocating existing money. Americans already spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care, which means that we need to figure out ways to spend our health care dollars more effectively instead of drastically increasing spending. In fact, one independent estimate said my bill could save taxpayers $70 billion and ensure a majority of currently uninsured Americans.
• Transforms Medicaid to provide real coverage and care. The Patients’ Choice Act transforms Medicaid by building upon the innovations we have seen in a number of states. My plan would integrates low-income families with dependent children into higher quality private plans through a tax credit and direct financial assistance. Keeping families together within one provider network will foster coordinated, personalized care and promote innovative patient care models such as medical homes. My plan also maintains current law for benefit security and stable funding for individuals with disabilities but enables better care management. This would improve the health coverage and care for about 45 million Americans, and save taxpayers about $260 billion. States would save a lot as well: about $960 billion over 10 years!
• Invests in prevention and wellness. The Patients’ Choice Act invests in prevention and wellness for all Americans. Currently, five preventable chronic diseases cause two-thirds of American deaths and consume 75 percent of our total health expenditures each year. These chronic diseases are largely preventable. My plan’s investment in public health and disease prevention will help reduce health care costs and improve the quality of Americans’ lives.
• Less government control and no government-run plan. The Patients’ Choice Act increases patient control and decreases government control. I strongly oppose the creation of any new government-run health care plan. A government-run program would only compound existing problems, by giving taxpayer dollars to Washington bureaucrats who would wield undue control over Americans’ health care decisions. A new government health care plan would also mean that millions of Americans would lose their current health care. Furthermore, socialized governmental systems stay afloat by rationing care and letting people die before their time. Numerous studies, reports, and media have shown that necessary medical procedures are delayed far too long in countries where there is socialized medicine. A government-run plan is not the answer. A government-run plan would unfortunately operate with the compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the federal Katrina response. It will not meet the basic needs of our citizens, reduce costs or improve outcomes, so I will continue to oppose it.
All Americans should have the ability to make their own health care decisions, see the doctor they want, and get the care they need. As a practicing physician and two-time cancer survivor, I support targeted, sensible health care reform which builds on what works and fixes what is broken. I will fight for solutions that strengthen the relationship between patients and doctors, solutions that put patients –not Washington bureaucrats – in charge of their health care decisions and provide common-sense solutions to our nation’s health care crisis.
Republicans and ObamaCare
- The sound of silence is deafening.
Listen. That sound of silence? That's what's known as the united Republican response to President Barack Obama's drive to socialize health care.
The president has a plan, and he's laid it on the table. The industry groups that once helped Republicans beat HillaryCare are today sitting at that table. Unions are mobilized. A liberal umbrella group, Health Care for American Now, is spending $40 million to get a "public option," a new federal entitlement that would kill off private insurance. Democrats passed a budget blueprint that will allow them to cram through that "public option" with just 51 votes.
Republicans? They're trying to figure out what they think.
Well, not all of them. Earlier this week I ended up in the office of Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, where the doctor was hosting North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr. The duo is, for the second time, crafting a comprehensive reform that would lower costs, cover the uninsured, and put Americans in control of their health care. And while the senators decline to talk GOP politics, their bill raises the multitrillion-dollar question: Will the party have the nerve or sense to coalesce behind some such conservative alternative to the Democratic product?
They'd better, because the days of Republicans winning these battles solely by spooking Americans are over. Phil Gramm, Harry and Louise might have scored with that approach in the 1990s, but the intervening years have brought spiraling costs and public unrest. Americans want a fix. Democrats promise one. The GOP can't tank the public option simply by complaining it will kill private insurance. The party has to finally elucidate how it plans to allow the private market to work.
Not that the senators don't think Republicans need to make clear to the country that the public option is, in Mr. Burr's words, "a fast track to a single-payer system." But they are also operating on the belief that Republicans must go beyond Band-Aid solutions to embrace, as Mr. Coburn puts it, a "complete transformation" of a system that is "structurally" flawed.
Their own bill overhauls the tax code, currently stacked in favor of corporate employees, to provide a tax credit to every American to purchase insurance. It expands health-savings accounts. It creates state health-insurance exchanges, where private insurers compete to cover Americans, including the uninsured. (This is partly modeled on the Medicare drug program, which has provided seniors with choice and held down costs.)
More broadly, it seeks to reorient financial incentives so that the system is no longer focused, as Mr. Coburn puts it, on "sick care," but on preventing the chronic diseases that eat 75% of health expenditures. These incentives would be used to lower costs and discourage insurers from cherry-picking patients. The bill also dives into Medicare and Medicaid reform.
Yet no small number of Senate Republicans are biding their time in Max Baucus land, waiting to see what the Democratic finance chairman produces as a "bipartisan" product. (Read: A bill the president wants.) This crowd has taken to heart Mr. Obama's accusation that they are the party of "no," and think it might be easier to be the party of Baucus, or the party of Baucus-lite, or the party of nothing whatsoever.
The White House is targeting folks like Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch and other Senate Republicans who back in 1997 voted for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which was pitched by Democrats at the time as a modest program to help poor kids. It has, of course, become exactly what Democrats always intended it to be: a ballooning federal entitlement that is today transferring middle-class children from private insurance onto the federal rolls. This might be thought of as a teachable moment. But now Republican "moderates" are all ears for the administration's soothing suggestions that perhaps the "public option" can be "structured" so as to protect private insurance. Uh-huh.
Another group of Republicans are still going 50 rounds over taxes -- namely, whether a deduction isn't a more principled and cleaner way than credits to equalize the tax treatment of insurance. This is a legitimate debate, but one that should've been had 10 years ago when Republicans were in the majority. While the GOP fiddled, Democrats focused the argument on "uninsureds," which has made a tax deduction (which would only cover those who pay taxes) even less politically palatable.
Over in the House time runs on, as the Republican leadership and a health-care working group continue to noodle over platforms, policies, egos and timing. Democrats intend to be debating their bill by June.
As for Messrs. Coburn and Burr, they spent a good half hour with me enthusiastically explaining why a competitive market would improve health, provide control and choice, lower costs, and tackle entitlements. It's a good pitch. If only the rest of America could hear the party make it.
Related Health Care News & Press Releases
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10/19/14 | Making Ebola preparedness a priority |
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12/30/13 | The Year Washington Fled Reality |
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10/15/13 | An Obamacare Battle We Can Win |
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6/13/13 | Washington's Leadership Crisis |
6/13/13 | Washington's Leadership Crisis |
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4/18/13 | Change Medicare to Save Medicare |
4/17/13 | Change Medicare to Save Medicare |
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12/19/12 | Prescription for Trouble |
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10/9/12 | WASTEBOOK 2012 |
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5/13/11 | Don’t Miss These Details |
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2/16/11 | BURR & COBURN: Caution kills |
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10/4/10 | HHS ADMINISTRATIVE FAILURE |
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5/12/09 | Current record |
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9/24/07 | Opinion: The new Hillarycare |
9/11/07 | Healthy Medical Reforms |
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8/2/07 | Editorial: SCHIP Shape? |
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4/30/07 | FDA Bill draws wider drug debate |
4/24/07 | Responsible Medicine |
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3/23/07 | Republican Rx |
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11/1/06 | Editorial: Holding firm |
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10/6/06 | Major HIV/AIDS Oversight Action |
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9/19/06 | Doctor Tom's DDT Victory |
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6/28/06 | D.C. Kicks Off Anti-HIV Rally |
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5/18/06 | They'd Sooner Fix Medicaid |
5/4/06 | Editorial: Prodigal State |
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4/21/06 | How To Stop Medicaid Fraud |
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Floor Statements & Speeches
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