Dear President Obama, We share your belief that health reform is not only needed, but is long overdue. During Wednesday’s State of the Union address you told the nation, “If anyone from either party has a better approach [than the current proposals] that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”
We are hopeful that we can begin anew in the spirit of true bipartisanship and again submit our reform proposal to you. On May 20, 2009, we introduced comprehensive health reform legislation, The Patients’ Choice Act. We believe this legislation would put patients and physicians back in control of health care decisions. We hope you will seriously consider this legislation, because it accomplishes each of the goals you have outlined, but does so without dramatically expanding the size and scope of the federal government or raising taxes. These legitimate concerns are a primary reason reform efforts have stalled, and we would appreciate consideration of a different approach to our shared goals.
• Bringing Down Premiums. The Patients’ Choice Act equalizes the treatment of wages and health coverage under the tax code, which economists across the political spectrum confirm will effectively increase workers’ wages so all Americans can obtain affordable health coverage. • Bringing Down the Deficit. In a letter to Rep. Paul Ryan on September 21, 2009, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed policies in The Patients’ Choice Act and found they would reduce the deficit. • Covering the Uninsured. The Patients’ Choice Act gives all individuals a tax credit to buy health insurance regardless of their income, health, or employment status. • Strengthening Medicare For Seniors. The Patients’ Choice Act would eliminate billions and billions of taxpayer dollars being lost to Medicare fraud every year, by using the same smart technologies banks and financial institutions use to prevent identity theft and credit card fraud. Our plan also takes a step forward on payment reform with programs which increase care coordination between physicians and other health providers to lower costs and increase quality. • Stopping Insurance Company Abuses. The Patients’ Choice Act creates state market places for health insurance – we call them State Exchanges –so every American can choose a plan that best meets their own medical needs. Insurance companies in State Exchanges must cover all Americans, regardless of age, pre-existing conditions, or health history.
We believe that the Patients’ Choice Act meets the goals you articulated in Wednesday night’s State of the Union address. These are important goals the American people share.
On Wednesday, you asked Congress to not walk away from health reform. You asked us to “find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people.” We agree with you that the American people deserve health care reform, and we encourage you to give our proposals consideration. Sincerely,
Tom Coburn, M.D., U.S. Senator
Richard Burr, U.S. Senator Paul Ryan, Member of Congress
Devin Nunes, Member of Congress
Click here to read the entire letter.
Senate bill has 2,074 pages and weighs 20.8 pounds
A true cost of $2.5 trillion, that comes out to $1.2 billion per page. A true cost of $2.5 trillion, that comes out to $6.8 million per word.
Washington has just run a $1.4 trillion budget deficit for fiscal 2009, even as we are told a massive, new health-care government program will reduce deficits by raising and spending about a trillion dollars over 10 years. To believe that fantastic claim, you have to ignore everything we know about Washington and the history of government health-care programs.
Medicaid now costs 37 times more than it did when it was launched—after adjusting for inflation. Its current cost is over $250 billion, up 25% or $50 billion in fiscal 2009 alone, and that's before the health-care bill covers millions of new beneficiaries.
Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for the poor. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that its first-year costs would be $238 million. Instead it hit more than $1 billion, and costs have kept climbing.
Medicare has a similar record. In 1965, Congressional budgeters said that it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Its actual cost that year was $90 billion. Whoops.
Taxes will go up $493.6 billion—nearly half a trillion dollars.
Medicare will be cut $464.6 billion—another half a trillion dollars.
Health care bills federally funded abortion background here.
Dem's bill by the numbers here
Read the entire Senate health care bill here
Studies show that the Democrat bills will increase health care costs here
The federal government already runs 60% of health care in the United States. Read the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service report here
Medicare denies more patients than private insurers. Medicare denied 10 times the number of medical claims than any private insurer in 2008. See the numbers here
Dem bill creates new government rationing. See HELP Committee Minority Staff report here
CRS report on 97.6 percent of cloture votes result in bill passage here
Majority’s Health Bill Empowers Government Task Force At Center of Mammogram Controversy: see the facts here.
Joint Committee on Taxation analysis here
Major CBO Caveats to Cost Containment here
Read the RPC summary of Reid's bill here
Read the Oklahoma State Medical Association House of Delegates support for Coburn's health care policies here
Oklahoma State Insurance Commissioner says Reid health care bill will increase costs for Oklahomans. Read the letter here and additional information here
Read the Baucus bill.
Full cost of the Baucus bill.
Full account of spending and offsets in the Baucus bill.
Read S.1679 “The Affordable Choices Act,” which was passed out of the HELP Committee along party lines on July 15th, 2009.
Read the House Bill, H.R. 3200.
Scroll down to read Dr. Coburn’s prescription for health reform, The Patients’ Choice Act, S. 1099, and see how it will improve patient choice and control, while lowering costs and saving taxpayers money.
WASHINGTON – Earlier today, U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC) and U.S. Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) introduced health care reform legislation that delivers on the shared principles of promoting universal access to quality, affordable health care, and does so without adding billions of dollars in new debt or taxes.
“The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009,” transforms health care in America by strengthening the relationship between the patient and the doctor; using choice and competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs; and ensuring universal, affordable health care for all Americans. “The Patients’ Choice Act” promotes innovative, State-based solutions, along with fundamental reforms in the tax code, to give every American, regardless of employment status, age, or health condition, the ability and the resources to purchase health insurance. The comprehensive legislation includes concrete prevention and transparency initiatives, long overdue reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, investments in wellness programs and health IT, and more.
“As a practicing physician, I have seen first-hand how giving government more control over health care has failed to make health care more affordable and accessible. The American people deserve health care reform that will work, not another round of so-called reform that repeats the same failed policies of the past. Congress and the administration have the opportunity to pursue bold reform and a fresh start. The Patients’ Choice Act will provide every American with access to affordable health care without a tax increase, more debt and waiting lines,” Dr. Coburn said.
“The American health care system needs a complete transformation,” Senator Burr said. “The Patients’ Choice Act will finally enable Americans to own their health care instead of being trapped in the current system, which leaves people either uninsured, dependent on their employer, or forced into a government program. With a focus on prevention and wellness and covering those with pre-existing conditions, the Patients’ Choice Act will make health care affordable and accessible to all Americans.”
“Both parties need to step up to the plate with specific solutions to our nation’s health care crisis,” added Ryan. “The Patients’ Choice Act represents a clear alternative to those who seek to empower Washington at the expense of the individual, and I am hopeful that our efforts can help push Congress to enact a more sensible health care reform bill this year. The Patients’ Choice Act proves that America can have universal health care coverage without the government running our health care system.”
Nunes stated, “The American people deserve a health care system that is centered on their individual needs. Our bill will allow us to achieve this goal, while improving health outcomes, lowering cost and guaranteeing access to health care for every single American.”
Watch the press conference here
Click here to view the entire bill text
Click here for the comprehensive summary.
Click here for the brief summary.
Click here for answers to common questions and myths.
Click here for a section-by-section summary.
Click here to see how Dr. Coburn’s prescription for health care reform would affect you and your family. Click here to see how Dr. Coburn’s prescription for health care reform compares to the public plan option and the current health care system. Click here to read how Dr. Coburn’s prescription for health care reform is the only proposal that improves care, lowers costs, and ensures health insurance for all Americans.
Click here to read the Individual Auto-Enrollment Summary.
Compare Patients' Choice Act and Democrats' House Bill here.
Read the HSI Network, LLC independent study here.
Gingrich Statement on the Patients’ Choice Act
Read the sponsor's editorial on PCA 2009.
Coburn, Burr letter to Senator Reid regarding his recent remarks.
Read the Americans for Tax Reform's letter.
Coburn discusses health care on C-Span's Washington Journal
Republicans and ObamaCare
- The sound of silence is deafening.
Listen. That sound of silence? That's what's known as the united Republican response to President Barack Obama's drive to socialize health care.
The president has a plan, and he's laid it on the table. The industry groups that once helped Republicans beat HillaryCare are today sitting at that table. Unions are mobilized. A liberal umbrella group, Health Care for American Now, is spending $40 million to get a "public option," a new federal entitlement that would kill off private insurance. Democrats passed a budget blueprint that will allow them to cram through that "public option" with just 51 votes.
Republicans? They're trying to figure out what they think.
Well, not all of them. Earlier this week I ended up in the office of Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, where the doctor was hosting North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr. The duo is, for the second time, crafting a comprehensive reform that would lower costs, cover the uninsured, and put Americans in control of their health care. And while the senators decline to talk GOP politics, their bill raises the multitrillion-dollar question: Will the party have the nerve or sense to coalesce behind some such conservative alternative to the Democratic product?
They'd better, because the days of Republicans winning these battles solely by spooking Americans are over. Phil Gramm, Harry and Louise might have scored with that approach in the 1990s, but the intervening years have brought spiraling costs and public unrest. Americans want a fix. Democrats promise one. The GOP can't tank the public option simply by complaining it will kill private insurance. The party has to finally elucidate how it plans to allow the private market to work.
Not that the senators don't think Republicans need to make clear to the country that the public option is, in Mr. Burr's words, "a fast track to a single-payer system." But they are also operating on the belief that Republicans must go beyond Band-Aid solutions to embrace, as Mr. Coburn puts it, a "complete transformation" of a system that is "structurally" flawed.
Their own bill overhauls the tax code, currently stacked in favor of corporate employees, to provide a tax credit to every American to purchase insurance. It expands health-savings accounts. It creates state health-insurance exchanges, where private insurers compete to cover Americans, including the uninsured. (This is partly modeled on the Medicare drug program, which has provided seniors with choice and held down costs.)
More broadly, it seeks to reorient financial incentives so that the system is no longer focused, as Mr. Coburn puts it, on "sick care," but on preventing the chronic diseases that eat 75% of health expenditures. These incentives would be used to lower costs and discourage insurers from cherry-picking patients. The bill also dives into Medicare and Medicaid reform.
Yet no small number of Senate Republicans are biding their time in Max Baucus land, waiting to see what the Democratic finance chairman produces as a "bipartisan" product. (Read: A bill the president wants.) This crowd has taken to heart Mr. Obama's accusation that they are the party of "no," and think it might be easier to be the party of Baucus, or the party of Baucus-lite, or the party of nothing whatsoever.
The White House is targeting folks like Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch and other Senate Republicans who back in 1997 voted for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which was pitched by Democrats at the time as a modest program to help poor kids. It has, of course, become exactly what Democrats always intended it to be: a ballooning federal entitlement that is today transferring middle-class children from private insurance onto the federal rolls. This might be thought of as a teachable moment. But now Republican "moderates" are all ears for the administration's soothing suggestions that perhaps the "public option" can be "structured" so as to protect private insurance. Uh-huh.
Another group of Republicans are still going 50 rounds over taxes -- namely, whether a deduction isn't a more principled and cleaner way than credits to equalize the tax treatment of insurance. This is a legitimate debate, but one that should've been had 10 years ago when Republicans were in the majority. While the GOP fiddled, Democrats focused the argument on "uninsureds," which has made a tax deduction (which would only cover those who pay taxes) even less politically palatable.
Over in the House time runs on, as the Republican leadership and a health-care working group continue to noodle over platforms, policies, egos and timing. Democrats intend to be debating their bill by June.
As for Messrs. Coburn and Burr, they spent a good half hour with me enthusiastically explaining why a competitive market would improve health, provide control and choice, lower costs, and tackle entitlements. It's a good pitch. If only the rest of America could hear the party make it.
