HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

States Rise Up Against Speaker Pelosi’s Government Takeover of Health Care

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is proposing a 2,032-page government takeover of health care that will take power away from states, add to the burden of state budgets through a massive unfunded expansion of the Medicaid program, and add at least a $1.3 trillion burden on the American middle class over the next 10 years.   At time when the national unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, Pelosi Care will saddle small business and entrepreneurs - the engine of job creation in America - with “roughly $730 billion in tax increases,” according to Congress Daily.

States legislatures aren’t taking Pelosi’s proposed mandates sitting down, however.  The National Conference of State Legislatures reported this week that “members of at least 11 state legislatures are using the legislative process to seek to limit, alter or oppose selected federal actions, including single-payer provisions and mandates that would require purchase of insurance.”  In fact, “[a]s of late October, formal resolutions or bills had been filed in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wyoming” and “[u]p to ten additional states were reported in media or association articles to have discussed future action or intentions.” 

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) also wrote in a letter to the Indiana Congressional Delegation that “now is no time to pile more taxes and spending on a fragile economy, nor to add yet another industry to those taken over by the federal government in the last few months.”

Governor Daniels has it exactly right.  America can’t afford Speaker Pelosi’s costly government takeover of health care.   House Republicans have proposed a sensible solution that recognizes that health care reform must be market-driven, preserve the relationship between doctors and patients, and reduce health care costs for American families.  The GOP bill incorporates health care reform ideas Republicans at all levels of government have been promoting through the GOP State Solutions project launched earlier this year by House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and other means.

Pelosi Care will force states to comply with complex new federal regulations and directives, preventing them from developing health care programs that best fit the needs of their residents, and saddle governors and state legislators with massive unfunded mandates.  Pelosi Care will:

• Mandate an expansion of the Medicaid program: Raises the threshold for coverage to 150% of FPL ($33,000 per year for a family of four) costing states $34 billion over ten years according to the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
• Limit State Innovation: Sec. 2531(a)(4) prohibits states from receiving new incentive payments to adopt liability reforms if they put limits on attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.
• Grant sweeping powers to a new “Health Care Czar” that will impose new regulations on states and state insurance plans.

For example, the federal government will now:

• Regulate all insurance plans, both in and out of the Exchange (Page 127, Section 234);
• Decide which physicians and hospitals participate in the government-run plan and in private plan provider networks (Page 174-178, Section 304(b));
• Determine which states are allowed to operate their own Exchange and to terminate a previously-approved State Exchange at any time (Page 197-202; Section 308); and
• Override state laws regarding covered health benefits (Page 170-171; Section 303(d)).

As the New Hampshire Union Leader noted in an editorial today:

“If Pelosi’s bill becomes law, New Hampshire’s Medicaid costs would explode. Suddenly, state taxpayers would have to cover thousands more families, perhaps more than double the number covered now. And the bill prevents states from ever lowering eligibility requirements. We’d be stuck with those costs forever.”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is devoted to working with reform-minded GOP governors and state legislators to fight Washington bureaucracy, inefficiency, and waste and to promote better solutions to the challenges facing the American people.  That’s why Leader Boehner, along with Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Mike Rogers (R-MI), started the State Solutions project earlier this year, to bring ideas from outside Washington, D.C.  inside the Capitol - because Republicans know that real solutions start beyond the beltway. 

The Republicans’ health care alternative was drafted in that spirit.  To read a side-by-side comparison of the House Republican alternative to the Democrats’ $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care, click HERE.  To learn more about the Republican plan, visit HealthCare.GOP.gov.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Health Care, State Solutions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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