Hearing of the House Rules Committee - Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2011

Statement

The Republicans have a three-act play, with curtains for several of the nation's most important programs. First, repeal IPAB. Second, repeal the rest of health care reform. And finally, repeal Medicare, a nearly five-decade guarantee critical to the health and financial well-being of seniors.

So make no mistake. IPAB would be just the beginning. But not the end. Indeed, Republicans today are rolling out yet again -- their third act: Repeal of Medicare.

Let's be clear. Medicare is an essential commitment to America's seniors. Ending it would put private health insurance companies in control of seniors' health, allowing them to pick and choose which benefits are covered, shifting the burden of health costs to the backs of seniors and their families, and interfering with established doctor-patient relationships.

Medicare is also an essential part of controlling health care costs over the long term. It is part of the solution to rising health costs, not the basic problem. That's why the Congressional Budget Office last year projected that health costs would jump by 39 percent under the Republican plan to end the Medicare guarantee. According to the CBO, handing control of seniors' health care to private health insurance companies -- as the Republican plan would do -- would dramatically increase health costs for our nation. That moves us in the wrong direction.
The Affordable Care Act, on the other hand, presents a true vision for protecting Medicare -- lowering beneficiary costs, improving benefits and building important reforms in order to encourage health care centered on value, not volume.

Don't take my word. Listen to the analysis of nearly 300 economists who say that health reform puts into place essentially every cost-containment provision policy analysts have considered. Those policies are so effective that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that IPAB isn't going to be triggered until sometime after 2022. Health reform has slowed Medicare growth to historically low levels, while protecting and even improving benefits.

Yet here we are in 2012, still recovering from the worst recession in generations and Republicans unable to put forward a jobs bill. Republicans should work with Democrats on initiatives to move the economy forward in 2012, rather than trying to score political points on a bill that everyone knows will not become law.

Republicans have held the House Majority for 15 months, and yet we are in almost the exact same place today as we were a year ago: Urging Republicans to turn their focus to our economic recovery and away from their efforts to repeal vital health care provisions benefiting millions of Americans and their desire to end a 47-year-old commitment to our nation's seniors through Medicare.

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