Sec. 603. Policy statement on replacing the President’s health care law
603 words·~3 min read·
/bill/113/hconres/96/eh/section-603·A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
The House finds the following: The President’s health care law has failed to reduce health care premiums as promised. Health care premiums were supposed to decline by $2,500. Instead, according to the 2013 Employer Health Benefits Survey, health care premiums have increased by 5 percent for individual plans and 4 percent for family since 2012. Moreover, according to a report from the Energy and Commerce Committee, premiums for individual market plans may go up as much as 50 percent because of the law.
The President pledged that Americans would be able to keep their health care plan if they liked it. But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office now estimates 2 million Americans with employment-based health coverage will lose those plans. Then-Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said that the President’s health care law would create 4 million jobs over the life of the law and almost 400,000 jobs immediately. Instead, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the law will reduce full-time equivalent employment by about 2.0 million hours in 2017 and 2.5 million hours in 2024, compared with what would have occurred in the absence of the ACA. .
The implementation of the law has been a failure. The main website that Americans were supposed to use in purchasing new coverage was broken for over a month. Since the President’s health care law was signed into law, the Administration has announced 23 delays. The President has also failed to submit any nominees to sit on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel of bureaucrats that will cut Medicare by an additional $12.1 billion over the next ten years, according to the President’s own budget.
The President’s health care law should be repealed and replaced with reforms that make affordable and quality health care coverage available to all Americans. It is the policy of this resolution that the President’s health care law must not only be repealed, but also replaced, for the following reasons: The President’s health care law is a government-run system driving up health care costs and forcing Americans to lose their health care coverage and should be replaced with a reformed health care system that gives patients and their doctors more choice and control over their health care.
Instead of a complex structure of subsidies, firewalls, mandates, and penalties, a reformed health care system should make health care coverage portable. Instead of stifling innovation in health care technologies, treatments, and medications through Federal mandates, taxes, and price controls, a reformed health care system should encourage research and development. Instead of instituting one-size-fits-all directives from Federal bureaucracies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Independent Payment Advisory Board, individuals and families should be free to secure the health care coverage that best meets their needs.
Instead of allowing fraudulent lawsuits, which are driving up health care costs, the medical liability system should be reformed while at the same time reaffirming that States should be free to implement the policies that best suit their needs. Instead of using Federal taxes, mandates, and bureaucracies to address those who have trouble securing health care coverage, high risk pools should be established. Instead of more than doubling spending on Medicaid, which is driving up Federal debt and will eventually bankrupt State budgets, Medicaid spending should be brought under control and States should be given more flexibility to provide quality, affordable care to those who are eligible.
Instead of driving up health care costs and reducing employment, a reformed health care system should lower health care costs, which will increase economic growth an employment by lowering health care inflation.