Issue Position: Health

Issue Position

Health care is one of the most important issues facing American families and our nation's federal budget. Whether you are concerned about control over your health care choices, maintaining the primacy of the doctor-patient relationship, Medicare Part D benefit changes, reimbursement payments for physicians, federal requirements for Medicaid and ERISA-controlled plans, TRICARE benefits for veterans, or pharmaceutical development regulations--to name only a few important areas--the interference of the federal government in the health care sector has grown to a destructive level and continues to spiral out-of-control.

Our first order of business as a Republican-led House of Representatives was to repeal President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. We must replace it with targeted health care reforms that will produce real cost savings for American families without masking the true cost of reform to the federal government. Clearly, more federal control of health care is not the answer.

The federal government has managed Medicare into near bankruptcy. The government-funded and controlled health policies in the Affordable Care Act will soon be no different. We must instead focus on common-sense reforms, like modifying our medical liability laws, expanding access and use of consumer-driven products like Health Savings Accounts, and dealing with the challenge of Medicare physician reimbursements. Rather than fixing these problems, Congress has been content enacting short-term patches and kicking the can down the road for future Congresses to deal with. I look forward to accepting that challenge and working with my colleagues in the House of Representatives to find real solutions.

Common-sense solutions so often come from those individuals whose daily experiences challenge them to bring new ideas to their Representatives in Washington. As we move through the 112th Congress, I will continue to hold town hall meetings both in person and over the phone so that all the Seventh District residents can make both their challenges and solutions known.

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