The new year is here, but in her latest newsletter, Fourth District Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler is still singing her greatest hit from 2011- The Theme from the Job Destroying Health Care Law. Her newsletter is printed below:
As 2011 comes to a close and we move into 2012, the eyes of many Americans will soon zero in on the U.S. Supreme Court as it prepares to hold five-and-a-half hours of hearings over three days to determine the constitutionality of a number of components of the Obama health care takeover law. Among the issues to be determined by the High Court is the law’s individual mandate.
Although it was long known that the individual mandate and other components of the law would eventually end up in the Supreme Court as a result of challenges from the states, the U.S. House has not been idle in addressing the law’s problems. It has passed several bills that have either become law or have stalled in the Senate. Bills signed into law include legislation to repeal the requirement that businesses file IRS Form 1099s whenever they pay vendors more than $600 for goods in a single year.
The House also passed a bill to completely repeal the job-destroying health care law. Republicans had promised to pass legislation to repeal this government takeover of our health care industry, and H.R. 2 was approved only weeks after the 112th Congress was sworn in. Unfortunately, the effort to repeal the law was rejected on a procedural motion in the U.S. Senate.
In April, the House passed the 2012 budget resolution, which proposed to repeal the Obama health care law by budgeting $0 for its implementation over the ten-year budget window. This, of course, fell flat in the Senate as it continued its unacceptable refusal to pass a budget.
The House passed the Protect Life Act, prohibiting funding for abortion and abortion coverage under the health care law. This legislation also protects conscience rights for health care providers by specifying that federal agencies and state or local governments funded by the Obama health care takeover not discriminate against health care providers refusing to be involved in abortion. This bill, like to many others, has gone nowhere in the Senate.
These bills protecting Americans from the new health care law are only some of the steps that are being taken to help make health coverage more accessible and more affordable to the American people. I co-sponsor a number of bills aimed at addressing both access and cost:
- H.R. 5 provides medical malpractice reform to lower costs by decreasing defensive medicine.
- H.R. 371, the Health Care Choice Act, would allow for the buying of insurance across state lines. This legislation would create competition and reduce costs.
- H.R. 1370 would repeal the health insurance excise tax - an annual fee on health insurers. This added cost is not absorbed by the insurer. It is passed on to the patient.
- H.R. 436, the Protect Medical Innovation Act, could pass the House early in the new year. It would repeal Obamacare's $20 billion medical device tax.
Rest assured that while we await the Supreme Court hearings and the ruling or rulings that are expected in late June or early July, the House will continue to champion common sense solutions to address problems created by the law. Your representatives cannot sit on their hands and hope for a good outcome. Congress must take a stand to repeal this massive government takeover of our health care industry.
6 comments:
I am curious what her stand will be if it is declared Constitutional? Will she then want to change the Constitution or like Newt just get rid of the Supreme Court.
Every country in the industrialized world has a health care system run by the government for the benefit of the people. The Republicans came up with the idea of the individual mandate (as Newt Gingrich admits) when the Clintons forwarded an even more liberal proposal. The truth is that the more people know about the Act, the more they like it.
she will cry and whine till she gets more farm bailout cash
Every country in the industrialized world has a health care system run by the government for the benefit of the bureaucrats.
Fixed it for you.
I believe the U.K.'s NHS is the oldest and its example is instructive: after New Labour poured in lots more money, as of 2010 it's got twice as many bureaucrats as doctors and the number of the former is growing at 8 times the rate of the latter.
A headline you'll never see:
"Hartzler: We must stop massive government handouts to farmers."
It's not a "government takeover of our health care industry." At all.
Our health care system is broken. It is badly broken. We pay more, as a nation, than any other nation on the planet yet our mortality rate is 37th. We die sooner than people in Costa Rice, for pity's sake.
Far more than 50 million people in the country don't have health care because they can't afford it. Out health care needed fixing and the 2010 Health Care Reform Act was a way to get this started. Already, there have been millions of people who have benefited from only some of its provisions. The fact is, we need more repairs to the system, too. We actually need a "single-payer" program and the "public option" but we didn't get those on this go-round.
Leave the Health Care Reform Act of 2010 alone. We needed it then, we need it now. If anything, restrain the health care insurance companies from gouging the American public.
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