Sec. 807. Policy statement on repealing the President’s health care law and promoting real health care reform
1,120 words·~5 min read·
/bill/114/hconres/27/eh/section-807·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 put Washington’s priorities first, and not patients’. The Affordable Care Act
(ACA)has failed to reduce health care premiums as promised; instead, the law mandated benefits and coverage levels, denying patients the opportunity to choose the type of coverage that best suits their health needs and driving up health coverage costs. A typical family’s health care premiums were supposed to decline by $2,500 a year; instead, according to the 2014 Employer Health Benefits Survey, health care premiums have increased by 7 percent for individuals and families since 2012. The President pledged If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Instead, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now estimates 9 million Americans with employment-based health coverage will lose those plans due to the President’s health care law, further limiting patient choice. Then-Speaker of the House, 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 reduction in hours worked due to Obamacare represents a decline of about 2.0 to 2.5 million full-time equivalent workers, compared with what would have occurred in the absence of the law. The full impact on labor represents a reduction in employment by 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent, while additional studies show less modest results. A recent study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University estimates that Obamacare will reduce employment by up to 3 percent, or about 4 million full-time equivalent workers. The President has charged the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel of unelected bureaucrats, with cutting Medicare by an additional $20.9 billion over the next ten years, according to the President's most recent budget. Since ACA was signed into law, the administration has repeatedly failed to implement it as written. The President has unilaterally acted to make a total of 28 changes, delays, and exemptions. The President has signed into law another 17 changes made by Congress. The Supreme Court struck down the forced expansion of Medicaid; ruled the individual mandate could only be characterized as a tax to remain constitutional; and rejected the requirement that closely held companies provide health insurance to their employees if doing so violates these companies’ religious beliefs. Even now, almost five years after enactment, the Supreme Court continues to evaluate the legality of how the President's administration has implemented the law. All of these changes prove the folly underlying the entire program health care in the United States cannot be run from a centralized bureaucracy. The President's health care law is unaffordable, intrusive, overreaching, destructive, and unworkable. The law should be fully repealed, allowing for real, patient-centered health care reform: the development of real health care reforms that puts patients first, that make affordable, quality health care available to all Americans, and that build on the innovation and creativity of all the participants in the health care sector. It is the policy of this resolution that the President's health care law should be fully repealed and real health care reform promoted in accordance with the following principles: Health care reform should enhance affordability, accessibility, quality, innovation, choices and responsiveness in health care coverage for all Americans, putting patients, families, and doctors in charge, not Washington, DC. These reforms should encourage increased competition and transparency. Under the President's health care law, government controls Americans’ health care choices. Under true, patient-centered reform, Americans would. Real reform should be centered on ensuring that all Americans, no matter their age, income, or health status, have the ability to afford health care coverage. The health care delivery structure should be improved, and individuals should not be priced out of the health insurance market due to pre-existing conditions, but nationalized health care is not only unnecessary to accomplish this, it undermines the goal. Individuals should be allowed to join together voluntarily to pool risk through mechanisms such as Individual Membership Associations and Small Employer Membership Associations. Instead of Washington outlining for Americans the ways they cannot use their health insurance, reforms should make health coverage more portable. Individuals should be able to own their insurance and have it follow them in and out of jobs throughout their career. Small business owners should be permitted to band together across State lines through their membership in bona fide trade or professional associations to purchase health coverage for their families and employees at a low cost. This will increase small businesses’ bargaining power, volume discounts, and administrative efficiencies while giving them freedom from State-mandated benefit packages. Also, insurers licensed to sell policies in one State should be permitted to offer them to residents in any other State, and consumers should be permitted to shop for health insurance across State lines, as they are with other insurance products online, by mail, by phone, or in consultation with an insurance agent. Incentives for providers to deliver high-quality, responsive, and coordinated care will promote patient outcomes and drive down health care costs. likewise, reforms that work to restore the patient-physician relationship by reducing administrative burdens and allowing physicians to do what they do best—care for patients. Individuals and families should be free to secure the health care coverage that best meets their needs, rather than 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. Instead of stifling innovation in health care technologies, treatments, medications, and therapies with Federal mandates, taxes, and price controls, a reformed health care system should encourage research, development and innovation. Reform should return authority to States wherever possible to make the system more responsive to patients and their needs. Instead of tying States’ hands with Federal requirements for their Medicaid programs, the Federal Government should return control of this program to the States. Not only does the current Medicaid program drive up Federal debt and threaten to bankrupt State budgets, but States are better positioned to provide quality, affordable care to those who are eligible for the program and to track down and weed out waste, fraud and abuse. Beneficiary choices in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid should be improved. States should make available the purchase of private insurance as an option to their Medicaid and SCHIP populations (though they should not require enrollment). Reforms should be made to prevent lawsuit abuse and curb the practice of defensive medicine, which are significant drivers increasing health care costs. The burden of proof in medical malpractice cases should be based on compliance with best practice guidelines, and States should be free to implement those policies to best suit their needs.