House GOP to Deliver on Health Care Repeal Promise
After an appropriate pause to honor the victims of the tragic Arizona shooting, Congress resumes legislative activity with a vote to repeal the controversial, unpopular health care law.
There are a number of reasons it is important to act quickly to repeal this misguided law. First, it is a job killer. The very fact of its existence has discouraged businesses from hiring -- even before some of the most expensive provisions have gone into effect. Job creators know that Obamacare's burdensome mandates will raise their costs for each worker they employ. The Obama administration acknowledged as much in October when they granted waivers to exempt 30 major companies from complying with the law after those employers demonstrated that they simply could not afford the new regulations and would have to drop health coverage for their employees altogether. Without a waiver, fees for noncompliance can be just as damaging to businesses as the burdens of complying. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that penalties enforced against employers who can't afford to abide by the new insurance mandates will cause businesses to cut hours and jobs. This pay-if-you-do, pay-if-you-don't situation leaves job creators with no good options -- except the decision to simply not hire. With over 9 percent unemployment, raising hiring costs is not the way to help our sluggish job market recover from the recession.
At a cost of $1.2 trillion, Obamacare also poses an unsustainable burden to our national debt. The bill's proponents managed to hide most of the impact through budget gimmicks that required the CBO to calculate the deficit impact of 10 years of tax increases but just six years of spending increases, while double counting $500 billion in Medicare reductions, Social Security payroll taxes, and CLASS Act premiums. However, no accounting tricks can mask the fact that the federal debt now stands at 64 percent of GDP, and our yearly deficit is now measured in trillions. The American people know we need to be cutting spending and reforming our existing, costly entitlements-- not adding massive new government programs.
We do not need government-controlled health care in order to increase access to medical care. The most effective way to increase health care coverage is to make health care more affordable for all Americans. However, Obamacare fails utterly in the fundamental goal of lowering health care costs. The House Republican plan actually would reduce costs and make health care more accessible -- not through a 2,801-page bill that expands government control but through a series of incremental, commonsense reforms including medical liability reform, expansion of state high-risk pools, and the removal of restrictions that prevent families from purchasing less expensive insurance plans across state lines.
The American people have made it clear that they oppose Obamacare's immense costs and burdensome regulations. House Republicans have pledged to stop implementation of this flawed law before its disastrous impact on the economy spreads further, and the vote to repeal Obamacare is the first step.
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