Health Care Reform That Works

Floor Speech

Health Care Reform That Works

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I came to talk about health reform, but would first note that the gentleman from Virginia fails to mention that the economy began its nose-dive when Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007. For 54 months before that, with a Republican President and Republican control of Congress, the economy was doing very well and growing.

Madam Speaker, the American people have spoken loud and clear: they do not want a government takeover of health care. They want sensible, step by step health care reform that works. But the White House is not listening. Instead, they are proposing expensive new entitlements that will only worsen the Federal Government's finances and North Carolina family budgets. At least there is one thing we agree on: we need to have a bill that will lower the cost of health care in America. But you don't lower the cost of health care in America by creating expensive, new, government-run programs. The best way to lower the cost of health care is by empowering patients, putting patients in charge of their health care, not insurance companies and certainly not the government, is the solution.

While I agree with President Obama that we need to lower the cost of health care, the problem is that his proposals, which are simply retreads of the House and Senate bills, will not really lower costs. They are simply a trillion-dollar expansion of government control.

Lower costs will stem from patients who are empowered in making health care decisions through innovations like expanded health savings accounts and by making sure that the trial lawyers who are driving up the cost of health care with a blizzard of frivolous lawsuits are reined in.

So we should start over. Starting over is the single best way to produce bipartisan legislation that the public can support. We should focus on working step by step to enact commonsense health care reform that will lower costs for families and small businesses and expand access to affordable, high-quality care.

Republicans have been talking about a step-by-step approach for months. This approach would allow individuals to buy health care across State lines, cover people with preexisting conditions, improve access to health savings accounts, as well as enact medical liability reform. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that such a commonsense plan would reduce deficits by $68 billion and reduce private insurance premiums by up to 10 percent. This is a plan that doesn't grow the government, and it is a plan that reduces cost without a government takeover and without breaking the budget or soaking taxpayers. Madam Speaker, it is a plan that will work for the American people.

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