Affordable health care is achievable, but not with the current health care law.
Liberty provides people the options to choose how to live their lives. I do not have the responsibility to dictate for other people the choices they make in their lives. In the past few months, a small group in the federal government decided that because 10% of the country does not have health care insurance (some of them by their choice), 100% of Americans must change their health insurance. The same Democrat party that talks on and on about a “woman’s right to choose” what to do with her body just told every man and woman in America when, where, and how they can get health care. Where did all their passion for choice go?
My daughters will not have the same health care options I have had because of a few members of the Washington elite. What will that mean for them? In the days to come we will never know what medical advances were not discovered because private research dollars were suspended. Which hospital will close in days to come because it cannot afford to stay open privately? Which great future doctor will not go into medicine because he or she does not want to be a government employee?
If anyone honestly believes that the problems with health care in America can be resolved by more federal government control, they are sadly mistaken. Our national debate over health care should really be a debate in each state. Nowhere in the Constitution does it give the right or responsibility to the federal government to manage health care. There are many states, including Oklahoma, that have made strides in creating affordable health insurance. Oklahoma should also lead the way in tort reform, protecting patients and doctors.
The federal government’s role should be to remove the barriers that impede ingenuity by doing such things as increasing portability of insurance from group plans to individual plans and expanding the options for risk pools for individuals and small businesses. The federal government is working to limit the number and role of insurance companies when we should be removing the barriers so that we have more companies and more competition. There are insurance issues that need to be addressed, but the new health care law only compounds the problems and the costs instead of solving the problems.
When individuals own their own insurance and they watch prices and manage their own money, costs go down. We should encourage individuals to start their own health savings accounts (HSA). These allow people to buy catastrophic insurance and to put their money into a HSA so they can spend it for health care as they wish.
In Congress I will aggressively work to stop the funding to implement the new health care law. Then, I will work with a coalition of conservative House members to pass a free market based health care reform that will be consistent with our national values and Constitutional authority. The health care law was bad medicine from the beginning. It must be stopped and replaced.
James,
Thank you for your stance on health care reform. I am writing this from Capital Hill in D.C. after spending a disappointing day and a half in Washington. I am here for a “health care and politics” conference and have been meeting with our legislative representatives from Oklahoma while I am here. I could not agree more that the debate on health care should be a state by state issue! I look forward to your election so that you can make a difference for the citizens of Oklahoma as well as our nation. Debbie
James:
We must combat the entitlement notion that is creeping into healthcare. As more and more healthcare is being paid by third-party agencies (be it Medicare, Medicaid, insurance companies, etc), patients take less and less ownership of their own health and well-being. I believe that the general unhealthiness of America exists because people do not value their healthcare. Those on Medicaid pay at times a trivial (50-cent) copay to see a doctor. They don’t see value in the care they receive, and thus are less likely to adhere to their doctor’s recommendation/prescription. Compliance studies show that Medicaid patients have far less successful outcomes of treatment, not because of a lack of access to care, but because of a lack of adherence to the care that is delivered/recommended/prescribed to them. Why? Because they don’t value their bodies as much as they value their possessions. Studies have been done in various fields where patients whom had a higher copay assigned to them (even as little as raising their copay from 50 cents to 3 dollars or so) caused a significant impact in their adherence to doctor’s recommendations and improvement of their disease-state goals (such as improvement of glycemic control in diabetics, which ultimately will reduce risks of stroke, heart attacks, kidney failure, etc.). Psychology theory states that a consumer of a “product” like health care will not take value in it without any initial investment, and will continue to abuse what they have (i.e. their body). People will take care of their bodies if they see that their self-imposed abuses (smoking, bad diet, sloth, etc) will cost them more money. Currently, the government or their insurance company shoulders the majority of the cost.
Now that we look like we are going to have “free health care” after 2014, can one imagine what the overall health of Americans will be like after that? Why bother taking care of yourself, when you know that the Government will pick up the tab? Obamacare will create a real health crisis in this country beyond anything that we now can imagine. The health of millions of Americans rests on the implementation of Obamacare, and as such, it must be either repealed or seriously revamped prior to 2014.
To those that feel I am evil for asking that the poor pay more for their health care….you haven’t been interrupted by them getting phone calls on their iPhone while in my clinic. A very modest increase in their copay will improve their health far beyond what the government purportedly can do for them, by instilling psychological value and ownership of their own health.