Tax Breaks, Incentives are Keys to Good Coverage

Press Release

If you watched coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, you probably agree that the state of healthcare in America is a central issue in this presidential election. You may not have come to this conclusion by witnessing convention activities in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul, but rather via the steady stream of healthcare ads that saturated commercial breaks.

Highly publicized campaigns like "Divided We Fail" — a product of the AARP — and the "Harry and Louise" commercial — which features two everyday Americans talking about a friend's struggle with healthcare costs — highlight the plight that Americans are facing at a time when gas, food and healthcare prices are skyrocketing.

Late last year, I met with several of my Republican colleagues — a number of them medical doctors — to compile objectives we believe must be met in order to fix the healthcare crisis in America. Chaired by my colleagues Reps. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) and Charles Boustany (R-La.), we created a report, titled "Reasons to Believe." This commonsense plan identifies eight principles that directly address access to affordable healthcare, seek to fix government healthcare plans and provide easily attainable ways to enable providers to best serve every American.

A facet of the "Reasons to Believe" solution applies the market-based system to Medicare and Medicaid, allowing every American to opt to have control over their healthcare. This would enable consumers to pick their own doctor and lower their own healthcare costs. Americans should have control of such an important aspect of their life, their own health.

Healthy habits and preventative measures should be rewarded. Americans must take responsibility for their lifestyle choices, and healthcare policy should encourage wellness through financial incentives in the form of lower premiums.

We must stop punishing the entrepreneur who joins a start-up company or creates his or her own business by taking away his or her healthcare. We must not exacerbate problems for a worker who loses his or her job by taking away his or her health insurance. Every healthcare plan must be portable and must continue to cover its consumers when they change or lose their jobs.

All Americans should have health insurance, but the answer is not the "single-payer" government-run universal coverage that we hear the Democrats talking so much about. This impersonal, inefficient, and wasteful program squashes the competitive medicinal research industry that creates the world's most innovative drugs.

If something is broken, don't make it worse. Government-run healthcare is already out of control. Mismanagement has allowed Medicare and Medicaid to run up the costs of healthcare for everyone, especially the people who need it most.

A single-payer government-run healthcare program will not lower costs for consumers: Americans will pay higher payroll taxes. This program will not save money by reducing the administrative costs of private insurance: Bureaucratic interference and paperwork will eat up the projected amount of savings. And if you feel that you sit too long in a doctor's waiting room, you will not be happy with the waiting periods that a single-payer program will make you endure.

Small-business employers will be hit with massive increases to employment costs; employees will see big portions of their paycheck missing.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, Medicare currently accounts for 3 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, and cost growth is expected to outpace the economy, eventually reaching 11 percent of the GDP. Medicaid has become one of the largest portions of state spending budgets across the country. In total, healthcare spending is expected to more than double by 2016, reaching $4.1 trillion. Driven by the increasing costs of Medicare and Medicaid, federal revenues would have to grow by 25 percent in order to support a balanced budget.

Unless we fix Medicare and Medicaid, Americans will either be hit with significant cuts to other programs or face enormous tax increases.

Instead of piling more and more taxes on the stretched wallets of Americans, we should be giving Americans tax breaks and tax credits; extra money that they may use to choose the healthcare plan that best suits their needs.

A study just released by Mercer found that companies will respond to a projected 5.7 percent increase in healthcare costs by raising workers' deductibles and co-pays, or by getting rid of employer-provided health insurance altogether. Premiums rose by 6.1 percent last year and are only expected to get higher.

All Americans must have health insurance, but we should not give such an important responsibility to a far-away and bureaucratic government. Americans must be able to choose for themselves, and must have the ability to control their own healthcare. Is there anything more personal or important to our quality of life? Through tax breaks and incentives, Americans can best manage their health and the health of their family.

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