Pete Sessions: Government-run care not right for us

Two weeks ago, I held a town hall meeting that drew an estimated 1,500 North Texans to Richardson City Hall. The families and people who attended were not pawns of the insurance industry or political extremists – they are the same hardworking, taxpaying citizens whom I have met at neighborhood walks, community barbecues and civic events throughout my 13 years of service in Congress.

Despite differing views, all held the same basic concern: guaranteeing their families’ access to affordable, quality health care. As a consumer of private health insurance, I understand that skyrocketing health care costs make it difficult for many small businesses and families to afford the health care coverage they need. I also understand the anxieties expressed by people again and again at the meeting that health care will suffer if congressional Democrats force their radical health care overhaul on our nation.

This feedback is why I oppose the current government-run health care proposals barreling through Congress. Instead, I support common-sense, patient-centered solutions to make health care more affordable, reduce the number of uninsured and increase access to quality care.

To make coverage more affordable, every American should be able to purchase insurance with pre-tax dollars, like businesses already do. Individuals should be empowered to find the best-priced plan to fit their health care needs regardless of where they live or their pre-existing conditions. Additionally, churches and associations should be allowed to create large insurance pools that reduce costs for their members.

Patients should be allowed to own and control their own health care plans. Research has shown that when individuals can take charge of their own health care dollars, they better manage the costs of the care they need and want while still choosing their own doctor and hospital.

In short, I support giving families and doctors more control while ensuring that our system encourages innovative medical research and technology.

Unfortunately, the Democratic majority has chosen a different approach: forcing their own experiment through Congress that will result in higher costs, deeper deficits, more taxes, fewer choices and government interference in the patient-doctor relationship.

At the center of their plan is a bureaucrat-run “health exchange” that would crowd out the private health insurance market. Studies have shown that this exchange would force more than 114 million Americans off their current health insurance coverage and could evolve into a single-payer health care system.

Additionally, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Democratic plan would cost $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years – adding nearly $250 billion to the deficit while doing nothing to lower health care costs. To fund part of this new spending, they would tax every individual and business that does not follow the government mandate for health coverage.

To cover the rest, their strategy slashes hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, further reducing seniors’ benefits and access to care. I believe that it is fundamentally wrong to finance this new spending by diminishing benefits promised to seniors when they become eligible.

Unsurprisingly, when the government competes with the private sector, patients lose and the government wins. By diminishing patient choice and dictating what is included – or excluded – in health coverage, government-run health care allows Washington to decide the access and care patients receive from their doctors.

This is not the “change” North Texans want or deserve – a fact made clear at my Richardson town hall meeting and one shared by concerned citizens across the nation.

The Democratic leadership should abandon its strategy of forcing flawed legislation through Congress and instead work with Republicans to provide real, bipartisan solutions that provide every American access to affordable, patient-centered and quality health care of their choice.
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