Congressman Geoff Davis : Serving Kentucky's Fourth District

Washington, Nov 10, 2009 - On Saturday, November 7th, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi successfully forced passage of her trillion-dollar government takeover of health care, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962).  The bill narrowly passed the House by a vote of 220 to 215, despite broad bipartisan opposition.

The expansive provisions included in H.R. 3962 will affect the entire American health care system, which comprises one-sixth of our nation’s economy.  The bill creates an enormous bureaucracy with 118 new agencies, programs and commissions that will drastically expand the government’s role in the health care decisions of families and doctors.  You can view an organizational chart of the new bureaucracy here. 

In addition to the complicated new health care bureaucracy, H.R. 3962 includes a government-run public option that could eventually force private insurers out of business, putting the U.S. on a path to a single-payer, government-run health care system.  According to the nonpartisan Lewin Group, the public option could result in as many as 114 million Americans losing their current health insurance coverage, including 106 million Americans who currently have employer-provided health care.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that H.R. 3962 will cost $1.3 trillion.  To pay for its overwhelming cost, H.R. 3962 includes $732.5 billion in job-killing tax increases.  These tax increases will affect every American, including families making $250,000 or less, small businesses, people who are unable to afford insurance, and businesses that want to hire new workers. 

One particularly troubling provision of H.R. 3962 says that Americans who do not obtain “acceptable health insurance coverage” must pay a 2.5% tax.  The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation has confirmed that failure to pay this tax could result in criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

At a time when the national unemployment rate has reached a twenty-six year high, H.R. 3962 could further slow job growth in the U.S. thanks to  a new $135 billion employer mandate tax (“play or pay”) and a $150 billion small business surtax.  These tax increases could cause more than 5.5 million Americans to lose their jobs, according to a model developed by President Barack Obama’s own economic advisor, Dr. Christina Romer.  

Americans asked Congress to give them real health care reform that would increase access to affordable quality care without piling additional debt on future generations, costing more jobs, or putting the government between patients and their doctors.  Unlike Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues, Republicans listened to the pleas of the people and introduced fiscally responsible and effective health care reform legislation – H.R. 4038, the Common Sense Health Reform and Affordability Act. 

H.R. 4038 represents a comprehensive approach to eliminating inefficiencies and waste, instead of a government takeover that will only create more.  Our bill focuses on reducing premium costs for all Americans to make health insurance more affordable and accessible without raising taxes or cutting Medicare benefits for seniors.  According to CBO, under H.R. 4038, insurance premiums will be $5,000 less expensive than the cheapest health insurance plan available under the Democrat bill. 

There are better solutions to improve health care for American families than H.R. 3962. It is time for Congress to listen to the people and reach across the aisle to craft commonsense solutions that will address the problems in our health care system.

Although H.R. 3962 has passed the House, the debate on health care reform is far from over.   I encourage you to continue to e-mail me with your thoughts on health care by clicking here..  You can read more about the Republican alternative legislation and stay up-to-date on the debate by visiting my Health Care issue page.