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Health Care
Throughout my career in Lansing and in Washington, I have supported numerous bills to provide better health care to children, seniors, people with disabilities and other Americans. I have also supported providing prescription drugs to seniors as part of Medicare. I very much favor efforts to make health care even more available and affordable.
Over the past several months, I have worked to ensure that the principles from both the Republicans and Democrats are upheld in reaching a potential comprise agreement on health insurance reform legislation.
On March 21, the House of Representatives considered the bill the Senate previously had passed on Christmas Eve, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), and it passed the House by a vote of 219 to 212. I voted against this legislation for many reasons, especially that it is far too complex and expensive. I believe that we can develop a better, more workable solution for health care. President Obama signed this legislation into law on March 23.
However, as you may have heard, there is bipartisan agreement that this new law is flawed. In fact, also on March 21, the House considered a second bill to make changes to it. This second bill, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (H.R. 4872), would make a number of changes to the health bill that is now law. The Senate still needs to vote on this second, “fix-it” bill.
In tandem, this newly enacted law and the second, fix-it bill raise taxes on Americans by over $569 billion, create harsh penalties for businesses that cannot afford health care for employees, and do not prohibit taxpayer funds from being used for abortions. Also, this new law and the second bill include many new health insurance requirements that will increase costs, doing nearly nothing to control the long-term spiral of ever-increasing health care costs.
In addition, the closed-door tactics of writing this legislation with virtually no Republican input, and some very questionable parliamentary tactics used in the process to pass it, are extremely disappointing to me. We could do much better if we all worked together to produce the best possible health care insurance legislation at the lowest possible cost.
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