U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Gainesville opposes proposed legislation to reform America’s current health care system.
Deal and the other members of the Health Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee spent a portion of Thursday discussing House Resolution 3200, also called America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009.
"One of the state reasons for change is the desire to provide health insurance coverage for those who are currently uninsured. According to testimony from the Congressional Budget Office, even after the plan is fully implemented, there will still be 16 to 17 million nonelderly who will remain uninsured," Deal said during the subcommittee meeting.
"Another reason given for this bill is that the cost of health care needs to be reduced. Once again, based on (Congressional Budget Office) testimony, this bill will increase the federal deficit over the next 10 years by $1.042 trillion. This does not include the adverse effects on the economy as a whole, which CBO can’t calculate, but they acknowledge will perhaps result in 75,000 job losses."
Among other things, Deal says he opposes the resolution because it would lower the quality of health care, reduce payments to health care providers and restrict choices all Americans.
The recently proposed resolution, which has more than 1,000 pages worth of text, is designed to "provide quality affordable health care for all Americans and control health care costs."
In order to reach that end, the resolution proposes several policy changes including creating a public health insurance option.
"A public option alongside private plans is so important because it helps to create true competition," said U.S. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Calif. "I think this country is not only prepared for this moment. This is an opportunity for us to make the U.S. health care system stronger and better."
The resolution also proposes to eliminate the ability of insurance companies to "engage in discriminatory practices that enable them to refuse to sell or renew policies due to an individual’s health status" or to exclude coverage for treatments for pre-existing health conditions.
"Unlike the incremental approaches of the past, this is a legislative tsunami that will sweep away the long-standing advances which have made our health care system the envy of the world, and leave in its wake a system of government dictated health care that, at best, has a lackluster record of success in those countries in which have tried it," Deal said.
"These are indeed changes, but I don’t think they are the changes Americans want."