Republicans Still Believe in the Health Care Marketplace by Rep. Joe Barton (TX)

The Democratic health care agenda is not bipartisan or inclusive. It sure made me feel like the young woman who was being wooed by the young man and the young man kept promising to take her out on a date and he finally called her up and said, ‘Well, I know we had a date tomorrow but I can’t do it because I’m getting married to somebody else.’ I guess there are some people that do both but luckily you’re not one of them and I’m not either. But it is what it is.
 
We have a bill, we have the secretary of Health and Human Services here, who will probably wax eloquent in support of the bill, though I haven’t read her testimony but I bet it will be supportive.
 
The good news is we’re going to have a series of hearings. We will at some point in time go to markup. Hope springs eternal on our side that some of our ideas may yet be included. The bill in its current form – I’ve not read all 852 pages of it – but I’ve seen summaries and it’s a massive government involvement in Americans’ health care. It’s hugely expensive. I’ve seen estimates as high as $3 trillion over 10 years. I’m told that the word ‘shall’ is mentioned over 1,300 times. I’m told that there are 38 new mandates, that there are dozens of new bureaucracies.
 
I have heard Chairman Waxman say that nobody has to take the government plan who doesn’t want it. That may well be true technically but if you put so many mandates on private insurance that it becomes cost-prohibitive, and if you raise the Medicaid eligibility to 400 percent, there are going to be millions of Americans who lose their coverage because private businesses that offer it can’t offer it. There are going to be millions of Americans who say, ‘Why should I pay a monthly premium of X dollars when I can go on Medicaid and pay little or nothing.’ The short of it is, if this bill were to become law, we wouldn’t have much of a private health insurance system in America within 10 to 20 years. So, put me down as undecided.
 
Republicans have an alternative that’s private-sector based, that lets the individuals maintain their choice. We do some of things that you do in your bill. We do have a permanent physician reimbursement fix. We do have a reimbursable tax credit for low-income Americans. But the big difference between the Republican bill and the Democratic proposal is that, on the Republican side, we still believe in the marketplace. We don’t have all the mandates, we don’t force Americans into a government plan that we think is not very good for America.

Popularity: unranked [?]