Commentary
By Sen. Mitch McConnell
Like millions of Americans, I recognize the need for health care reform. Many Kentuckians I talk to are rightly worried about rising healthcare costs, and far too many go without coverage at all. We can all agree that Congress should enact meaningful reform to address these problems. The question is: what kind of reform? Taking the wrong course would leave millions of Americans worse off by taking away the coverage they already have and like.
America has watched nervously in recent months as the federal government has nearly taken over the banking industry, major insurance companies, and now the auto industry. If some liberals in Congress get their way, health care is next—and people won’t like the results.
A government-run health insurance plan, as some are urging, may seem like a great option at first, but in reality would soon become the only option. That’s because private companies couldn’t possibly compete with government, which could use an unlimited amount of taxpayer money, dictate prices to doctors and undercut current coverage for millions.
Nonpartisan experts have estimated that enacting this so-called option could cause 119 million Americans to lose their current insurance and end up in a government-run plan. And that’s where our real troubles would begin. As we see in countries that already have government-run health care, once government takes over, it starts limiting access.
Imagine your health care brought to you by the same bureaucrats who run the Department of Motor Vehicles. Unelected, unaccountable boards get to decide whether you are eligible for surgery, or if you receive a life-saving drug. And they could make the same decisions for your mother and father, husband or wife, or sick child.
This horrific scenario is real for our neighbors to the north in Canada, who live with a government-run healthcare system. One Canadian doctor wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently of an Ontario woman named Sylvia de Vries who rushed to Michigan to have a large tumor removed from her abdomen. The Michigan doctor told that if not for the operation, she would have died within weeks. In her native Canada, she was still on the surgery waiting list.
I think that Americans who are satisfied with their current plan should be allowed to keep it, and I will oppose any attempt to install a government-run plan. Americans don’t want to see the healthcare coverage they already have and like go away. However, there are some positive steps government can take to make health care less expensive and more accessible.
Runaway lawsuits drive up healthcare costs and limit access to health care in many places, including Kentucky. These suits make the amount doctors have to pay in medical malpractice insurance so high, many have been forced to limit the care they provide, and a number of hospitals have stopped delivering babies. Placing reasonable limits on medical-liability lawsuits can lower costs and bring doctors back to many parts of Kentucky and elsewhere.
Congress can also fix a fundamental unfairness in the tax laws concerning health care. Right now, companies that provide health insurance to their employees can deduct the cost of those premiums from their taxes. But individuals who purchase their own coverage cannot. That leaves many families paying more or going without altogether. We can and should change this.
While small businesses create the vast majority of new jobs in this country, many of them struggle to provide health insurance for their employees. Government should help these entrepreneurs and their employees, not burden them with new taxes or mandates that will kill jobs.
Also, most insurance plans will help pay for people when they get sick, but don’t do enough to encourage people to stay healthy. I will work to make sure that any healthcare reform Congress enacts provides incentives for prevention and wellness.
Common-sense solutions like these are the answers Americans are looking for when they call on government to do something about health care. They will lower costs and expand access to care. But government shouldn’t take away the quality health care that millions of Americans already have and like. That would be a prime example of the “cure”—in this case, a government takeover of health care—proving worse than the disease.
Sen. Mitch McConnell is the Senate Republican Leader and only the second Kentuckian to lead his party in the U.S. Senate.
