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America has the best health care system in the world. Unfortunately, bad tax policy, frivolous lawsuits, government price fixing and over-regulation are reducing access to care and drastically increasing health care costs leaving us with 47 million Americans without basic health insurance. If Congress does not act quickly, employers will be forced to either not offer health insurance, or ask their workers to pay an even larger part of the bill. Waiting times for doctors and hospitals will grow as the cost of health insurance and health care continues to increase. America’s best and brightest students will no longer consider medicine as a career.
Politically, there are two diametrically opposed approaches to solving America’s health care crisis. One approach assumes that government-controlled health care is the only practical solution. In these socialized systems like we see in Europe and Canada, the relationship between doctor and patient will no longer exist because bureaucrats will control the delivery of care and taxpayers will foot the bill for so-called “free” universal health care.
While this approach has considerable political appeal, socialized medicine is known for delivering few medical innovations, poor quality, long waiting times and the rationing of care in ways that put patients at dire risk. This is why the wealthy in Europe and Canada often come to the United States for care. If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it is “free.”
Sen. Jim DeMint has been fighting for the right solutions to health care with one goal in mind: every American should have a health plan that they can afford, own and keep. By adopting this principle, Sen. DeMint has spent his time in Congress supporting individual choice and ownership and believes that Congress should allow the health care industry to operate like other free market service industries. Instead of forcing physicians and hospitals to be focused on government-fixed prices and codes, competition would allow health care providers to simplify -- and reduce -- their prices, just like we’ve seen happen in the field of laser eye surgery.
For years, DeMint has championed the expansion and strengthening Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Rather than using costly insurance bureaucracies to pay for primary health care services, patients could instead pay doctors and hospitals directly from tax-deductible deposits made to their HSA. HSAs also represent a real savings account: the money rolls over from year-to-year and is fully “portable,” meaning HSA coverage follows you even if you change jobs or retire.
To further reduce costs for consumers, the senator has introduced S. 2477, the Health Care Choice Act, which would turn the health insurance market, currently a patchwork of discrepant state regulations, into a nationwide market. This increased competition would allow families to shop for health policies across state lines and choose from a wide variety of plans to fit their specific needs.
According to the Institute of Medicine, most adults who do not have health insurance cite the high cost as the reason. Specifically, state health insurance mandates increase the cost of basic health coverage anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent, depending on the state and its mandates. In 1965, there were only seven state health insurance benefit mandates. Today, there are 1,961 mandates nationwide. These overly-burdensome mandates have created a health market that is unbalanced and unfair.
The Health Care Choice Act solves the state mandate problem by allowing Americans to purchase a basic, low-cost policy without hundred of benefit mandates they don't need. Likewise, those Americans who are interested in a particular benefit would be allowed to do that as well. Furthermore, this proposal will help the uninsured find affordable health insurance, while also providing every American with better health insurance choices.
DeMint is also working to ensure that our burdensome tax code does not serve as another barrier to obtaining affordable health coverage. To that end, he has introduced S. 2835, the Health Care Equity Act. The Health Care Equity Act is the first step to addressing the problem with the highly uneven subsidization of private health insurance. The proposal allows all Americans who do not receive health insurance through their employer to deduct 100 percent of their health insurance premiums from their taxes. By making this crucial change in our tax code, we will begin to level the playing field among those who purchase their health care directly, on their own, or through their employer.
A patient-centered health care system would turn patients into shoppers, strengthen doctor-patient relationships, improve quality and reduce prices. This innovative approach would also give unprecedented health insurance access to small businesses and working families who are too often priced out of the current market. DeMint is leading the effort in the U.S. Senate to act as quickly as possible to ensure that America’s health care system remains second-to-none: patients are counting on us.
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