This Bill Is Not Dangerous to Your Health or Your Freedom
Contains No Mandates Forcing Individualsor States to Do Anything
Every day, Americans tell me they want a bill written in plain English. They want members of Congress to read the entire bill before voting. They want a bill anyone can inspect. A 20-page bill means that pork projects, secret deals, and exemptions for Washington insiders cannot be slipped between the pages. The language in this bill does not give the American people the runaround.
Twenty pages should be enough. The framers of the Constitution established the entire federal government in just 18 pages.
This bill recognizes that states have regulated health insurance for more than six decades, consistent with the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945. Some states have taken smart approaches to lowering costs and expanding access, especially to people with preexisting conditions. This bill copies what works.
TITLE I : Liberates consumers to buy policies from other states and puts consumers on notice that the products they buy out-of-state may have different consumer protections than those imposed in their own state. This title also imposes federal consumer protections on plans sold interstate, ensuring that those plans prohibit rescission and protect consumers who have paid their premiums from being dropped. An HMO plan costs a 25-year-old California male $260 a month, while a New Yorker has to pay $1,228 for a similar plan. Free the New Yorker to shop outside of his
state.
TITLE 2: Provides federal incentives for states to establish medical courts, ensuring quicker, fairer verdicts in medical liability cases and at the same time preserving every litigant’s right to trial by jury. Medical courts will be presided over by a judge who knows the issues, has the experience, and can identify honest expert witnesses. (The judge will also reduce the impact of those who are not honest. Tort law has always been a matter left to states.) This bill does not mandate that states establish medical courts or attempt to federalize tort law. It does provide block grants to states to impose caps on damages and, more importantly, to establish medical courts. Why just cap unjust damage awards when you can eliminate them by having expert judges?
TITLE 3: Provides federal incentives for states to establish or improve subsidized high-risk pools to help consumers with preexisting conditions and poor health. (This concept is similar to what is also proposed in the Patients’ Choice Act, supported by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). No state is required to establish these pools.)
TITLE 4: Extends the current 65 percent COBRA subsidy, established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The president’s fiscal year 2011 budget also contains such an extension. Republicans are likely to find this an important common ground. COBRA subsidies are not a permanent entitlement but rather a temporary helping
hand to those who have been laid off. The average COBRA annual premium for a family of four is $13,322 , a big price tag when you’ve lost your job. For more than half of uninsured Americans legally in this country, being uninsured is a temporary problem. They find another job and are insured again in less than a year. We need to help them in
between jobs. The 10-year cost of Titles I, 2 , and 3 of this bill is $27 billion. The COBRA extension is already included in the president’s fiscal year 2011 budget. Funding this COBRA subsidy could cost $24 billion per year and provide coverage for an estimated 7 million people.
You can read the entire bill at:
www.defendyourhealthcare.us.
When you’re told that “something had to be done” and the “Obama health law is better than nothing,” you have the answer: Here is a 20-page bill that will help make insurance affordable and help the uninsured. It can be done without lowering your standard of care, putting the government in charge of your care, or taking away your freedom.
The American people should be calling on the president and Congress to repeal the ObamaCare law.
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