Letter: Halt Pelosi health bill, Cassidy says

• Published: Nov 5, 2009 - Page: 8B

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Health-care reform is a national imperative. Republicans and Democrats agree that reform should lower costs to expand access to quality care.

I have learned from my experience at LSU Earl K. Long Medical Center that empowering patients can lower costs and improve their health. Patients are the best guardians of health-care dollars, so health reform should empower patients with control over health-care spending along with the information needed to make wise health-care decisions.

Health savings accounts embrace this model. HSAs are essentially bank accounts filled with dedicated health-care dollars accessed via debit card or reimbursement. The patient owns the HSA and keeps unspent HSA dollars from year to year, providing an incentive to control costs. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that HSAs are 30 percent cheaper than traditional insurance policies with similar benefits and that 27 percent of those currently covered by HSAs previously were uninsured.

This patient-centered approach is consistent with the basic economic principle that whoever controls the dollar controls the outcome.

On Oct. 29, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced a 1,990-page, $1.055 trillion health-care bill. She intends to pass it today or Friday, giving the American people just one week to learn what’s in this 1,990-page bill.

My concern is that Speaker Pelosi’s plan is government-centered, not patient-centered. It concentrates power in Washington, taking power away from states and citizens.

For example, Speaker Pelosi’s bill:

• Uses the word “shall” 3,429 times. In legislation, “shall” means “you must.”
• Creates 111 new boards, bureaucracies and programs.
• Establishes a “Health Benefits Advisory Committee” to dictate which health-insurance plans are legal or illegal (Sec. 223).
• Prohibits the sale of private individual insurance policies, beginning in 2013 (Sec. 202).
• Cuts $150 billion from Medicare Advantage (Sec. 1161).
• Imposes a $34 billion unfunded Medicaid mandate on state taxpayers (Sec. 1701), costing Louisiana hundreds of millions in state funding for roads, education and economic development projects.
• Imposes $729.5 billion in new taxes (Secs. 501, 512, 551, 1802).
• Causes a higher rate of health-care inflation than the status quo, according to the CBO.

If these facts are as disturbing to you as they are to me, I encourage you to ask your friends and family across the country to contact their representatives and senators and tell them to support a patient-centered alternative to Speaker Pelosi’s government-centered plan.

The American people applied the brakes to a government-takeover of health in August, and wavering members of Congress need to hear from their constituents again. We will not be able to pass real health reform unless we stop Speaker Pelosi’s bill first.

Bill Cassidy, M.D.
congressman, District 6
Baton Rouge