Walberg Weekly Wrap-Up: "We Need Real Health Care Reform Now"

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Walberg Weekly Wrap-Up: "We Need Real Health Care Reform Now"

As I have met with families in south-central Michigan over the past few weeks, I have been reminded time and time again about the rising cost of health care. Even for those with insurance costs continue to rise, and emergency rooms are filled with the uninsured. Many of you continue in jobs you may not enjoy just to keep your health insurance.

There is no reason to sugarcoat the obvious truth: our current health care system is fatally flawed. Right now, more than 47 million Americans are without coverage and millions more are underinsured. Now is the absolute right time to step forward with real solutions that help American families.

I believe we need solutions that make health care more affordable and accessible and place health-care decisions with medical professionals and patients. In order to provide necessary reform to our broken health care system and provide needed, high quality health coverage to more Americans, we need to totally rethink the current system.

Some in Washington support a government-run and taxpayer-funded single provider system in which Washington, D.C., bureaucrats would have ultimate decision making authority over every American's medical coverage. I believe this approach is at best misguided and at worst will fail to meet the needs of those who require coverage.

We need to make health care more competitive to bring down costs. America needs more specialization so that patients are not bouncing from one doctor's office to the next, without ever making it to the right doctor. We need more community clinics that will allow Americans to go in and receive a specific common treatment, such as being treated for strep throat, without being forced to wait in a long line at a doctor's office.

I have introduced a bill, the Making Health Care More Affordable Act, that will move America's health care system in the right direction, empower Americans to make their own health care decisions and offer health care consumers more high-quality options. This bill ties together six core reforms to make patient-centered health care more affordable and accessible:

1) Provide Health Insurance Tax Credit - If Congress provides a Health Insurance Tax Credit of up to $2,500 for individuals and $6,000 for a family of four, health insurance will become much more affordable and people will be able to take their health insurance with them when they switch jobs.

2) Create Association Health Plans - These plans allow small businesses to band together to increase buying power in the market and help lower costs.

3) Allow individuals the option to purchase health insurance across state lines - This will help create a national market for health insurance by having consumers, not bureaucrats, find the coverage which best suits consumer needs. In fact, a recent study presented at the American Enterprise Institute showed that just this reform would bring down health insurance costs to provide 12 million more Americans with health insurance.

4) Build on the success of Health Savings Accounts - H.S.A's allow people to take control of their health care decisions, make health insurance more affordable and increase choice.

5) Stop lawsuit abuse - Frivolous lawsuits are driving up costs of health care, thus limiting the number of physicians pursuing careers in certain specialties and forcing doctors to practice defensive medicine.

6) Encourage Health Information Technology - High-tech efficiencies, such as electronic health records, increase health care productivity, lower costs and reduce the potential for medical errors. In fact, a study by the RAND Corporation revealed that widespread implementation of Health IT could save $162 billion in health care costs and prevent 2.2 million undesired adverse drug reactions.

I recently signed the non-partisan "Divided We Fail" Health Care Pledge to demonstrate my pledge to work across party lines and with all stakeholders to modernize our health care system into the 21st century. The time is now for real health care reform that will put patients back in control. Individuals and families need to be able to make important health care decisions without being denied by big insurance companies or the whims of Washington, D.C. bureaucrats.

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