Health Care

Rising health care costs are putting immense economic and physical stress on many individuals and families in Kentucky’s First Congressional District. The cost of health care in America continues to be a critical roadblock preventing access to coverage for tens of millions across the country. I am committed to improving America’s health care system and providing individuals and families access to affordable care.

Unfortunately, President Obama and a Democratic majority in Congress made a bad situation even worse when they rammed through Obamacare back in 2010 with no opportunity for amendment. Justified by promises of lower costs, increased access, and minimal disruption to the current system, Obamacare has been nothing short of a disaster since its enactment. The broken promises continue to pile up as insurance policies are canceled, premiums skyrocket, patients lose access to their doctors, and businesses cut hours and lay off employees. These broken promises come on top of the more than $ 500 billion in Medicare cuts and $500 billion in tax increases we already knew were coming.   

This is why I have voted over 50 times to repeal, delay, or defund Obamacare and remain committed to shielding as many Americans as possible from the harmful effects of this law. Make no mistake: I know there needs to be reform to ensure quality care at the lowest price possible, but this was not accomplished by Obamacare.  Congress needs to repeal this law and regain the trust of the American people by enacting a series of targeted, common sense reforms that will lower cost and increase without bankrupting the country and placing a government bureaucrat between patients and doctors.  

As a member of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, I have crafted ten proposals I feel can be a starting point to a step by step approach to help ensure Kentuckians receive the care and treatment they need at a cost they can afford.

Rep. Whitfield has proposed “Ten Steps to a Healthier America” to make meaningful reforms to healthcare that are truly bipartisan and that would ensure access while also bringing down costs. They include:

1. Make Insurance Affordable for All Americans: To ensure all Americans have access to quality healthcare, we need to provide refundable tax credits to individuals and families to purchase insurance. I propose providing individuals with a $5,000 refundable tax credit and families a $10,000 refundable tax credit to purchase insurance in the open market. There are a variety of ways to pay for this, including closing some existing tax loopholes.

2. Ensure No American Gets Left Behind: While programs like SCHIP and Medicaid provide assistance to many low-income individuals, there are still some who fall through the cracks. To prevent this, my proposals would establish a new premium assistance program to aid low-income individuals with their insurance costs. My Ten Point plan also proposes requiring states to help pay for low-income individuals' healthcare premiums through their state SCHIP and Medicaid programs. Funding for this could come from tightening citizenship requirements for SCHIP and Medicaid by requiring a valid Social Security card and government issued ID to be shown before someone is enrolled in these programs.

3. Make it Easier and More Affordable for Small Businesses to Provide Insurance: As healthcare rates continue to climb, it has become increasingly difficult for small businesses to cover their employees. When the costs become too high, small business owners are forced to cut benefits altogether, leaving employees and their families to purchase more expensive individual insurance. I believe small businesses should be allowed to band together and negotiate with insurers to get better deals for coverage, and allow churches, alumni associations and other organizations to sponsor groups. Additionally, my Ten Point plan would allow groups to purchase insurance across state lines, which will increase the size of the insurance pool and lower costs.

4. Empower Patients to Take Ownership of their healthcare by Increasing Transparency: One of the biggest problems with health insurance today is that it is extremely confusing. Many times, consumers are unaware of how much different procedures will cost, how much their out of pocket expenses will be, what types of procedures are actually covered and so on. To remedy this, my Ten Point plan proposes the creation of a new system to empower patients to take ownership over their healthcare plans. Further, my plan would also establish an online healthcare registry which would require insurance companies and the government to disclose the prices they charge or reimburse for services. The database would be searchable so that individuals could go online and shop for the plan that best fits their needs.

5. Ensure Patient Access to Care and Control Costs by Reforming Our Malpractice

Laws: One of the biggest challenges facing the First Congressional District is the ability to attract physicians. There are several reasons for this, and I believe the biggest one is the lack of medical liability reform in Kentucky - especially since all the bordering states have some type of medical liability reform. The increasing cost of liability insurance as a result of frivolous lawsuits spurs many doctors to pursue defensive medicine to guard against such lawsuits. While I agree that patients should be compensated for any malpractice or medical neglect, there needs to be an established limit in order to prevent frivolous lawsuits.

6. Encourage Healthy Behavior and Promote Preventative Care: Our nation's healthcare costs continue to skyrocket, due in large part to many behaviors that can be prevented. Studies show that 70% of all healthcare costs are the direct result of behavior. Furthermore, 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions - cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. A large majority of these conditions are preventable. To promote and encourage healthy behavior, I believe that we need to alter federal regulations to encourage employers to provide healthy behavior incentives to their workers.

7. Reform COBRA: As our economy continues to struggle, more and more employees are faced with the task of having to purchase COBRA healthcare coverage in order to provide temporary coverage while they look for another job. The costs of these plans are extremely high and not economically feasible for someone who has just lost a job. I know we must reform the COBRA market to ensure workers have more affordable healthcare plans to choose. In my Ten Point plan, I propose allowing individuals to immediately transition into the individual market without having to exhaust COBRA benefits. This would also allow employers the flexibility to offer a less expensive catastrophic plan at the time of the employee's departure.

8. Encourage Individuals to Invest in Their Own Healthcare: One of the biggest things that can be done to reduce the cost of healthcare is make individuals financially invested in their own well-being. I believe it is important to encourage the use of health savings accounts (HSA's) and offer lower premiums and reduced cost sharing for individuals who practice healthy behaviors. Safeway, Inc. has taken this approach and, in turn, kept their per capita healthcare costs flat, while most American companies' costs have increased 38% during the same time period.

9. Promote Community Health Centers: Community health centers fill a much-needed gap in the country’s health safety net for low- and middle-income households. When I was Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, I conducted a hearing examining ways to maximize the effectiveness of federal grant dollars used for community health services, whether Medicaid and Medicare can play a role in helping community health centers better respond to growing health challenges, and ways to better incorporate community health centers as part of America’s medical and health networks. I believe that we must continue to look for ways to utilize community health centers as a means of providing quality care at an affordable price.

10. Ensure Physicians are Paid Fairly: Medicare continues to reimburse physicians at a level lower than the actual costs of procedures, causing some physicians to stop seeing Medicare patients. I believe in the need to ensure physicians are adequately reimbursed for their services in order to make certain they are still able to practice medicine. To address this reimbursement inequity once and for all, my Ten Point plan would replace the flawed Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula with a more accurate reimbursement method, the Medicare Economic Index (MEI).