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Defense policy analysis, commentary and discussion.
When Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act this March, it took a health insurance system that was locked in a decades-long spiral of rising costs and shrinking security and set it on a new course. The new law contains a series of long-overdue reforms that will put consumers — not insurance companies — in charge of their health care.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed into law despite a chorus of misinformation. Today, though, that disinformation is giving way to Americans’ real-world experiences of health care reform’s effects on their lives. As reform becomes a reality, it will become clear that its effects are more protection and lower costs for consumers, more control for families and small-business owners — not insurance companies — over health care decisions, and less debt for our nation. There is still a great deal of work standing between today and reform’s full implementation in 2014, but possibly the biggest challenge is standing strong against political pressure to go back on the bill’s deficit-reducing promises.
Being an opponent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does not mean that I oppose affordable health care for Americans nor do I oppose reforms to our nation’s health care delivery system. What I do oppose is a government takeover of our health care system, which I believe this new law leads to.
For decades, American leaders worked to pass comprehensive health care reform to lower skyrocketing costs and improve quality in our health care system. In March, those efforts came to fruition when the president signed the groundbreaking Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. And now, the reforms we worked so hard to pass are becoming a reality for millions of Americans.
Three months ago, President Barack Obama signed into law the signature item of his administration’s leftist agenda: a government takeover of health care. Since that day, a steady stream of missteps and sobering reports on how irreparably broken our new health care system will be under the Democrats’ massive government scheme has solidified numerous concerns in the minds of most Americans. Namely, Obamacare is a hastily crafted maze of Washington-empowering, government-first policies that will forever scar the quality, affordability and accessibility of health care in this nation.
I met Gloria Bitner of Marlborough, Conn., at a town hall last year. Now 63 years old, she suffered a heart attack at age 54 and fortunately was covered under her husband’s health plan at the time.
For my entire adult life, I have fought for the right of Americans to have safe, affordable and accessible health care. Our new health care law puts us squarely on the path to realizing those goals.
Over the past year, as Congress debated how best to reform our health care system, much of the focus was placed on the issue of access — ensuring that all Americans have health insurance. However, access to insurance does not guarantee access to quality care. The new health care law squandered a critical opportunity to strengthen our health care system by addressing the root causes of unsustainable increases in health care costs.
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