Accessibility menu
State Representative Jim Abeler
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-1729
For more information contact: House GOP Communications 651-296-5520
OP/ED COLUMN
Health Care Reform Has Arrived
Why would a sensible Republican not be pleased with the new health insurance reform bill? It certainly has some appealing elements. Coverage of preexisting conditions and portability are good features we can all celebrate. Although potentially expensive, no out-of-pocket maximums or lifetime caps are also great to have.
But we need to look a little bit deeper into what the bill will really do.
As our recent GAMC solution shows, Minnesota is a leader in reform, increased access and cost-containment. The new bill limits Minnesota’s ability to continue innovating for health care reform. Our GAMC solution also showed the benefits of bipartisan collaboration and negotiation. The federal health bill, on the other hand, was driven through using back-door agreements and single-minded politics. As House Speaker Pelosi said, “we’ll have to pass the bill before we know what’s in it.” The consequences of this backwards approach are already apparent.
The controversial new health insurance mandate includes “healthcare returns” to the IRS, which will be getting 16,000 new employees, to scrutinize whether individuals and businesses are in compliance. There are also required standards and fines for non-compliance. Even if you are happy with your current insurance you may not be able to keep it. Some people in this country still like their freedom to decide a few things for themselves, and feel the government is far overreaching its proper role.
This weekend we also discovered discrepancies over the preexisting condition issue. If an insurance company is covering a child, the new bill means they must cover preexisting conditions. However, the bill lacks “guaranteed issue” provisions. This means that insurers are not required to issue policies for children with preexisting conditions. A more open and collaborative process would have averted this mistake. Instead, the reform falls short of our goals.
Next, new taxes on businesses and medical device manufacturers threaten thousands of private sector jobs. It could be particularly harmful in Minnesota, where several medical technology companies are located. In addition, several companies including 3M, AT&T and Caterpillar now project hundreds of millions of dollars in charges against their earnings due to the unforeseen effects of the new health care bill. Beware the unintended consequences of this "landmark" legislation.
While adding 15 million more people to Medicaid sounds humane, the consequences are more complex. There are serious problems with these programs including waste, fraud and unsustainable spending growth. The mammoth expenditures of these programs risk bankrupting our entire social service system. We should reform these public programs before continuing to expand them.
Further, cost-containment measures are nearly absent in this reform bill, and healthcare costs are still expected to increase. We must reverse this trend. We should emphasize value over volume, and stop encouraging doctors and systems to engage in wasteful practices and habits. Over-utilization is as much as 20 percent of current health care costs—that is $500 billion a year!
Finally, while the bill tries to help people purchase health insurance, it spends over a trillion dollars in the next decade. With no end of the federal deficit in sight, we must wonder if it is prudent to continue making promises we cannot keep.
Is there hope for the future? Yes, through innovation and redesign. Creative and alternative providers have discovered many new healthcare answers, only to be stymied by medical politics, inflexible government regulations and stubborn insurance companies. We need to encourage the use of treatments that are the best for each individual and that actually work.
We also need real reforms to lower clinic costs and insurance overhead. Up to half of every “health” dollar goes to paperwork. Each dollar saved is a dollar that can be spent on care or used to reduce high premiums.
Because this new reform package does little to address many critical areas, the work should continue. We must repeal and repair the problematic aspects of the law and continue our work in other areas to deliver the promised results of health care reform.
Jim Abeler
State Representative, Anoka
News Items
- PiPress Editorial: Minnesota Legislature: Collaboration would have helped - (Posted: Jun 3 2013 10:07AM)
- REPS. ABELER AND NEWTON APPOINTED TO SELECT COMMITTEE ON VETERANS HOUSING - (Posted: May 2 2013 4:01PM)
- SEN. PETERSEN AND REP. ABELER TAKE A STAND FOR VETERANS - (Posted: Apr 2 2013 12:00AM)
- Archived News Items
- Subscribe to RSS News Feeds
- Read more about RSS.