Crossroads GPS strongly supports H.R. 3350, the Keep Your Health Plan Act, which will receive a vote in the House of Representatives this week. The President’s repeated and now-repudiated promises to the contrary, it is plain to all that his health care law is destroying millions of Americans’ access to affordable health insurance and Congress must act to mitigate the damage that Obamacare is causing. H.R. 3350 is a modest, pro-patient measure that will ensure that the insurance providers who are prohibited from offering affordable health plans can continue to do so. President Obama’s press conference today announcing a temporary and legally-questionable administrative approach to this problem is no substitute for prompt congressional action.
To be clear, this bill will not “fix” the president’s health care law. Obamacare cannot serve as a meaningful platform to protect the doctor-patient relationship and improve the public health, and it must be scrapped so that real reform can occur. The best way to ensure effective health care policy is to mitigate the injuries of Obamacare in the short term, repeal the entire law as quickly as possible, and promptly enact true reform that puts patients, not government mandates, at the center of the health care system.
Crossroads GPS has long championed a set of policies to guide that reform, available at http://www.crossroadsgps.org/healthcare-facts/. We are further encouraged by the conservative reform proposals that have been offered in the House. Just by way of example, Rep. Tom Price has offered H.R. 2300, the Empowering Patients First Act, and Rep. Steve Scalise is championing H.R. 3121, the American Health Care Reform Act. Also worth reviewing is the Wall St. Journal op-ed today by Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin outlining another variation on pro-patient health care reform. Conservative reforms such as these will lower costs, improve quality, and ensure greater affordability and access to care for millions of Americans.
