Issue Position: Healthcare

Issue Position

Obamacare rests on a crumbling foundation of broken promises and heavy-handed government control of choices that rightfully belong to individuals.

President Obama promised that if you liked the health plan that you chose, you could keep it. At least one million Californians have now lost the plans and doctors they chose and wanted to keep, and the American Enterprise Institute estimates that fully 100,000,000 Americans could lose their employer-provided insurance next year. Instead of being free to choose, we are forced to purchase policies with higher premiums, bigger deductibles and co-payments and fewer choices from a website that doesn't work.

There is no single law on our nation's books that threatens such a large part of our economy more than Obamacare. Higher taxes, massive increases in government spending and job-killing regulations are just the beginning. Businesses, both large and small, have already begun either cutting hours or removing spouses of employees from their health insurance plans because of Obamacare.

When little Sarah Murnaghan was qualified by her doctors for a set of adult lungs, the Secretary of Health and Human Services was the only obstacle in Sarah's path to survival. She could waive a bureaucratic hurdle, but chose not to, telling a hearing of Congress that "Some will live and some will die." I support repealing Obamacare, because such decisions should be between families and their doctors, not government officials.

The American people will be looking to Republicans for leadership on restoring principles of freedom and competition to the healthcare marketplace, and it's critical that in place of Obamacare we offer a patient-centered system based on freedom of choice.

- Facilitate personal ownership of plans by extending the same favorable tax treatment to individuals that is currently enjoyed by companies purchasing insurance, allowing individuals to take plans with them from job to job.
- Let freedom of association lower costs and provide for greater portability, by allowing individuals to join together into religious groups, fraternal organizations, business associations and other entities to purchase group plans presently available only through one's employer.
- Place a health care plan within the means of every American by providing tax deductions and credits.
- Increase competition in the marketplace by permitting Americans to purchase plans of their choice across state lines.
- Reduce cost-drivers such as malpractice costs by instituting effective tort reform, limiting non-economic damages and transitioning to a loser-pays system.

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