Since its implementation, the President’s healthcare law has time and again harmed, rather than helped, the overwhelming majority of Americans. The policies put forth in Washington have real, painful effects on Fifth District Virginians, and I am committed to repealing this law and replacing it with market-based solutions to lower costs and improve access to quality healthcare for all Americans.
The President’s healthcare law contains a wide variety of harmful provisions, including more than a dozen tax increases. Last Thursday, the House passed the Protect Medical Innovation Act to repeal one such tax increase within the President’s healthcare law – the medical device tax. The tax was imposed on medical devices that range from dentures to pacemakers to MRI machines. These devices not only save lives and improve patients’ health, but the makers of these items employ hundreds of thousands of Americans. Imposing an additional tax hinders those jobs, innovation, and patient care. I was proud to cosponsor this legislation and see it pass the House with wide bipartisan support. It is my hope that the Senate joins us in passing this legislation to send it to the President’s desk.
This week, I will join my colleagues in the House to mitigate yet another harmful portion of the President’s healthcare law. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is a panel of fifteen unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats that will be given a staggering amount of control over the care Medicare patients receive. The law grants these individuals substantial authority to slash Medicare payments to providers or eliminate payments for certain treatments and procedures altogether. Congress should instead be making such significant decisions about the services Medicare patients receive – not a panel of unelected appointees that cannot be held accountable by the American public. The IPAB is just another example in the healthcare law that reinforces the fundamental difference between this Administration’s view that Washington knows best and my view that the American people that know best.
These two bills are small steps in the right direction toward protecting the people from the negative impacts of this fundamentally flawed law. But much more must be done to reverse all the harm this law has created by massively expanding the size, scope, and reach of the federal government into such personal matters. We have to implement real healthcare reform that actually reduces the cost of care, premiums, and deductibles and does not separate patients from their doctors. I remain committed to reforms that are patient-centered and market-oriented to deliver the healthcare system the American people deserve.
If you need any additional information or if we may be of assistance to you, please visit my website at hurt.house.gov or call my Washington office: (202) 225-4711, Charlottesville office: (434) 973-9631, Danville office: (434) 791-2596, or Farmville office: (434) 395-0120.
Robert Hurt represents Virginia’s Fifth District in Congress.
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