Chairman Price: “The First Step to Replace is Repeal”

Remarks:

“As a physician, one of the tenants of medicine is first, ‘do no harm.’ Sadly, the president’s law does real harm. Now, the Supreme Court has said that the law is constitutional. That doesn’t make it good policy.

“It harms all of the principles that Americans hold dear as it relates to health care. It increases costs, decreases accessibility, lowers quality and limits choices — the wrong direction for our country. It harms patients, especially seniors, by removing $500 billion from Medicare and having 15 unaccountable bureaucrats deny payment for health care services — decisions that should be made by patients and doctors, not by government.

“It harms doctors, over 80 percent of whom in a recent poll said that they would have to consider getting out of medicine because of this law. And it harms our economy, killing over 800,000 jobs and making it more difficult for small businesses, the job creation engine of our nation, to create jobs.

“And it’s that much more frustrating because it doesn’t have to be this way. There are positive solutions that don’t require putting Washington in charge. There’s a better way, and the first step to that better way is to repeal this law, so that we may work in a rational and deliberative and, yes, bipartisan process, for patient-centered health care, where patients and families and doctors make medical decisions, not Washington. 

“The president’s law doesn’t just harm the health of patients and seniors. It harms the health of our economy and our nation. And the first step to replace is to repeal, and we can start today.”