Santorum: There is a better plan than Obama Romney Care
GOP candidate outlines health care plan; says it offers better way to achieve affordable insurance and to reach fiscal responsibility.
As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, we Americans need to remember that we have the freedom to make choices for ourselves. We, not our government, choose the food to eat, the clothes to wear, the ideas to believe. “Obamacare“is the opposite of freedom. Under Obamacare, the government, not the individual, has freedom. We can do better.
Just ask the Congressional Budget Office. It forecast that as many as 20 million Americans could lose their employer-provided health insurance under Obamacare, and that premium costs will rise over the next decade.
Obamacare — based on Romneycare, the plan Massachusetts adopted when Mitt Romney was governor — tells insurance companies which benefits their policies must offer and what range of prices they could charge. It requires that individuals buy conforming policies, and cuts $500 billion from Medicare. The Independent Payment Advisory Board will limit what treatments doctors can prescribe.
Consistent with the principles upon which our country was founded, Americans know that Obamacare is bad policy, bad medicine, bad for the country and badly needs repeal. Republicans need a nominee with the credibility to take on President Obama on an issue vital to voters, and a president who will repeal Obamacare. I will be that president.
My plan offers a better way to combine fiscal responsibility and health care reform. Americans should have access to high-quality, affordable health care with health care decisions made by patients and their physicians, not bureaucrats.
Our wise Founding Fathers didn’t give the government control over your health. The government has done little right these past few years, and President Obama wants to inflict this incompetence on your personal life.
Under my plan (see my website for more details), Americans will be able to buy health insurance with pre-tax dollars, or continue to receive insurance through their employer. All licensed insurance plans would be eligible. Companies would be encouraged to compete over state lines, and Americans would have a choice of different plans and premiums, just like with auto and home insurance. Health insurers could offer highdeductible plans with lower premiums combined with health savings accounts, or more traditional managed care or fee-for-service plans. Low-income individuals would get tax credits so they could buy the same kind of health care as other Americans.
The contrast with Obamacare could not be starker. Obamacare prohibits health savings accounts, and turns the insurance industry into a federally controlled public utility. My plan would allow all Americans to shop around and get their health insurance on the open market — just like they buy other kinds of insurance.
Our health system’s costs are high, in part, because of frivolous lawsuits. One major objective of my reform, unlike Obamacare, is promoting health care liability reform in the states and as it relates to federal programs like Medicare.
What about Americans who are born with health conditions that make insurance companies unwilling to take them, such as my little daughter Bella? In a nation of 313 milliion people, about 2 million to 4 million people a year have uninsurable conditions.
First, my plan encourages affordable coverage, so there will be fewer uncovered families with uninsurable conditions. If people are already insured, their insurer covers them when their health changes, or when they have sick children. That was the law even before Obamacare.
Once people have insurance, they would be able to switch to another plan immediately if they have not allowed coverage to drop. If they have a break in coverage, it would be more expensive to sign up afterward. That gives people an incentive to keep coverage.
In order to enable insurance companies to be able to offer low-cost premiums, those with severe illness need to be offered special health insurance programs through the state, known as risk pools. Some states already have them.
We don’t want to destroy America’s advantage as the world’s leader in innovative medicine. Since the mid-1970s, American residents hold more medical technology patents and have won more Nobel Prizes in medicine than residents of other countries combined.
America has forever been the world’s last bastion of freedom. For generations, we have fought to preserve the principles of liberty. Freedom and liberty are at the core of my health care proposal. Individuals, not the government, can and should make health care choices for themselves.