Although it’s far from perfect, I truly do believe we have the finest health care system in the world. We need to preserve what works in our system and work to improve what does not.

Unfortunately, the new health care law does neither. It is designed to lead to a government takeover of our entire health care system – one-sixth of our entire economy.

I have no faith that the government has any ability to run the nation’s health care effectively or efficiently. If this law is fully implemented, it will result in rationing, it will lower the quality of care and it will dramatically decrease medical innovation. That is the inevitable result of socialized medicine.

Unfortunately, the damage to the quality of our health care is only half the problem. This law will also lead to trillions of dollars of deficit spending over the next two decades because the cost of this new entitlement has been significantly underestimated. We simply can’t afford it. We are already facing a debt crisis caused by out-of-control government spending and the growth of entitlement programs that are not financially sound. It will be difficult enough to fix current programs without adding an entirely new entitlement.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be repealed so we can start over and address the real problems of our health care system. We should start with medical malpractice reform that would spare us hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary tests and junk lawsuits.

We should bring to health care the kind of free market that it has lacked for decades. This will lower costs and improve quality and customer service. Allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, reducing mandates that drive up the cost of insurance, encouraging the growth of Health Savings Accounts, giving individuals the same tax break employers get when they buy group care, improving medical information systems, and fostering patient-centered care should be the types of solutions we pursue.

We need these kinds of commonsense reforms that address cost and affordability without sacrificing the high-quality care for all Americans or stifling the innovation that saves lives.