Health Care
Fiscal conservatives recognize that our health care system needs a tune up, not a trade in. We have put together a better alternative for health care reform that will cut costs; eliminate the waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare; make insurance portable; allow small businesses to pool together to negotiate coverage; and provide tax credits, not penalties, to businesses that insure their employees. You can read more about this plan by clicking here.
I believe we need to empower patients, not burden them with government mandates. We need to preserve the doctor-patient relationship, not let government bureaucrats make health care treatment decisions. Most importantly, we need to make high quality coverage affordable for everyone, not pick winners and losers. By taking these steps, I believe we can fix our health care system while strengthening our economy.
I have supported the following legislation in the 111th Congress:
H.R. 1255: To protect the interests of residents of intermediate care facilities for the mentally retarded in class action lawsuits on behalf of a resident. This bill would provide mentally retarded patients in intermediate care facilities the right to decide whether to join a class action lawsuit filed against their facility by the Department of Justice.
H.R. 1362: the National MS and Parkinson’s Disease Registries Act. The bill would enable the development of a system to collect data on MS and Parkinson’s disease including information with respect to the incidence and prevalence of the disease in the United States.
H.R. 1557: the Cooper Wolf SAFE Act. This bill would require a detailed review of all entitlement spending programs to ensure they are fiscally sustainable.
H.R. 1894: the Medicare Fracture and Osteoporosis Testing Act. This bill would overturn harmful cuts to Medicare reimbursements for two common tests to measure bone mass and predict risk of future fracture.
H.R. 1740: the Breast Cancer Education and Awareness Requires Learning Young Act (EARLY). This bill would launch an aggressive public education campaign about breast cancer and women under age 40 — with an emphasis on women at higher risk due to their race, ethnicity, or genetic background. The bill would also raise awareness of the risk factors, the opportunities for genetic counseling and testing, and the unique challenges that face young women diagnosed with breast cancer.
H.R. 2204: the Medicare Access to Rural Anesthesiology Act. This bill would allow rural hospitals to use pass-through funds for anesthesiologists, as well as AAs and nurse anesthetists.
H.R. 444: the 340B Program Improvement and Integrity Act. This bill would extend 340B discounts, which are currently available for outpatient pharmaceuticals, to inpatient settings for hospitals already participating in the 340B program.
H.R. 2607: the Small Business Health Fairness Act. This bill would allow small businesses to band together through associations and purchase quality health care for workers and their families at a lower cost. Small Business Health Plans would increase small businesses’ bargaining power with health care providers, give them freedom from costly state-mandated benefit packages, and lower their health care costs by as much as 30 percent.
I am a cosponsor of H.R. 4138, the Medicare SGR Improvement and Reform Act, that would provide physicians with a 2% payment rate increase over the next four years without adding to our growing deficit. Using savings generated from a combination of medical liability reform, streamlining and simplifying administrative policies for health insurance plans, and existing resources from the “Medicare Improvement Fund,” we can ensure that doctors are properly reimbursed for their services without adding to our unimaginable debt burden.
This is so upsetting.
How that sitting on your hands and doing nothing thingie working out for you ‘just say no’republicans?
I am a specialist who sees children with lung disease. I just started my practice but I am sitting in an office with no patients because I am waiting for the government (Medicare) and the private insurances to approve my application for credentialing (ie acceptance into their plan). I submitted my applications on April 20 or so. Medicare has not even gotten to my application yet (today is June 11). Also, this process makes no sense. I don’t plan on seeing any older patients on Medicare. I am a Pediatric Pulmonologist. But the government has set a process by which I have to get Medicare approval BEFORE I can even start applying for Medicaid. Makes no sense. Medicare is way behind. They are only on applications on April 5th as of today. As for the private insurances, they offered me terrible rates. They want to pay me less than Medicare. This whole system has something very wrong with it. I just want to see, evaluate, and take care of the children. Obama’s plan will do nothing more but create a system more like Medicare – slow, ineffective, and broke. Not sure if there is anything that can be done about this silly process.
Fighting Acute Myloid Leukemia is no fun. Even worse is the fear that my oncologist will soon no longer be able to treat me because my only insurance in through Medicare, which has deminished his payments to the point where he has warned me that he may soon no longer be able to accept me as a patient. As I understand it, this reduction in payments was a result of cuts instigaged by the Bush administration. I think cutting costs is all fine and good, but if you do it on the backs of my doctors, and they drop me, I am going to be unhappy.
Congressman Culberson:
It is an honor to have a dedicated man in the House who is dedicated to public service. So often, politics and the media cause average Americans to forget how much our elected representatives do for us. Before I get into the content of my letter, I want to thank you for serving this great country.
I work as a teacher at a Christian School and two years ago was diagnosed with primary generalized epilepsy. Most people do not understand that epilepsy is not treatable currently for over one thirds of the population who have it. So far, I have been in that 1/3 and my life has been topsy turvey.
It started out with one seizure and the doctors were confident that I would get better. 10 months later, I had a series of three seizures (one in which I broke my shoulder). This required surgery and physical therapy. I now have been having seizures every two months. The hospital has become my second home as I have undergone video EEG at St. Lukes and been to the emergency room more times than I can count.
At twenty-nine, I cannot drive and have missed more work this year than in all the other years combined. I must admit to myself that I am disabled.
One of the biggest issues beyond the physical limitations has been the issue of rising health costs. The fire department charges me, the hospital charges me, the doctors charge me and I pay highly inflated prices for prescriptions at the hospital. For a person who does not use a credit card, I am in major debt.
You are a leader in the Senate and a leading figure in healthcare reform opposition. I know that this increases our deficit. It is also incredibly apparent that it causes other problems, fiscally for our great nation. I am a middle class man who works hard in service to students.
I must admit that I am incredibly happy that the president’s plan passed. In my opinion, people with chronic conditions like epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, etc. shouldn’t be punished for something that was out of my control. The healthcare lobby is huge in Washington. Often, it makes reform incredibly difficult. If you were to change positions on healthcare, for the normal guy, I would vote for you and encourage others to. It is my main issue because it changes the way I live. I am not a statistic, nor a spreadsheet on a budget, but a man who is active in politics who loves America who will also campaign with lobbyists and candidates who believe real reform should take place. I would love to join your team and, believe me, I have a clear outspoken voice. I also give money to campaigns I believe in. Please weigh this with your constituents and your conscience. I know you are a good man.
Sincerely,
Matt Logan
I own and manage independent testing facilities and have for 15 years. Since the health bill has passed, I have received letters from 3 different insurance companies amending their rates to over 50% of their current contracted rates…way below medicare rates. We CAN not make these changes and therefore, will no longer see patients who carry that type of insurance…the start of healthcare decline….if you have greedy health care companies who are trying to get more profit from this health care bill, they will lower their contractual rates and say too bad too sad to the providers (which they have done for over 10 years). Therefore, you either take it or don’t see those patients. At some point the providers who have lower quality, who are not accredited, etc will take their rates and that is what our health care that is available to you and me will become with our required insurance.
The focus on the bigger health care package may have distracted many from the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2009 (HR 1691) that is currently before the House. It is intended to mandate that insurance companies cover a minimum 48 hour holpital stay following a mastectomy. Please vote for this important legislation and protect American women’s health.
Most of this bill is common sense stuff that is good for the public and relies on the free market to deliver. The only thing that I see (so far) that can be construed as government interference is the requirement, in 2014, for everyone to have health insurance. So, for the majority of people, nothing will change – they will continue to get insurance through their employer. I can only see the good in this bill in that it stops the insurance companies from taking advantage of folks. Even the insurance companies are for this health care bill. The only ones that I can detect are against health care are the ones who currently have health insurance and are ticked off because of the process that was used to enact health care into law. These ticked off folks should recall that, under Bush, reconciliation was used to enact the prescription drug entitlement – and how many billions of dollars was that entitlement?
My other beef is that it is difficult to call yourself a legislator if you do not participate in the legislative process – Republicans never seemed to offer meaningful amendments/language/suggestions and just saying ‘no’ to everything is not participating.
There are plenty of other good fights to be had out there and there is no shortage of ways that you can have a positive impact on your district – so, I will look for your name in one of those fights but not the health care fight.
Thank you for your continued fiscal responsibility including the NO vote on health care. I may lose my retiree medical from my employer because of ObamaCare and I can’t imagine that any other plan is going to pay $17,400/year for the drug that keeps my rheumatoid arthritis from crippling me. I’d be interested in knowing your reaction to Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap” for entitlement reform.
Keep up the good work.