For several years, families and small businesses have suffered from the negative effects of ObamaCare.
In Congress, I have supported several bills that will help repeal some of ObamaCare’s most penalizing mandates that are hurting Mainers the most – individual mandate, IPAB, Medical Device Excise Tax and restored the work-week to 40 hours instead of 30 hours.
Furthermore, next month, the United States Supreme Court is expected to decide if the ObamaCare federal health insurance exchange subsidies are legal.
If they are ruled unlawful, it will be incumbent upon Congress to help create a thoughtful free market replacement for ObamaCare, and an off-ramp for the six million individuals, including more than 60,000 Mainers, who have in good faith purchased ObamaCare policies.
To that end, I sent a letter to Chairmen Paul Ryan (R-WI), Fred Upton (R-MI) and John Kline (R-MN) expressing my concerns and offering Made-In-Maine, free-market solutions to ObamaCare.
Below are several free-market solutions:
• Require hospitals and doctors to provide patients with the estimated costs of health care services and procedures so they can shop for the best care at the lowest price. This will reduce monthly health insurance premiums by driving down the underlying cost of health care.
• Allow insurance companies to share savings with patients when services and procedures of comparable quality are purchased outside of the health care plan’s network at below average costs.
• Allow individuals, families, and businesses to shop across state lines for the health insurance plans that fit their needs and pocketbooks.
• Remove the mandates for unnecessary and expensive health care services and procedures to be covered by all health insurance plans.
• Allow affordable high-deductible and low- premium health care policies to be offered by insurance companies.
• Allow small businesses and other organizations to band together while negotiating the purchase of the health insurance plans that best meets their needs at costs they can afford.
• Allow insurance companies to charge much less for health care plans sold to younger individuals and those who make healthy lifestyle choices.
• Require insurance companies to provide coverage to individuals with pre-existing health conditions.
• Require health insurance plans to be portable when workers change jobs.
• Allow states to establish reinsurance pools that provide affordable health insurance to those who need high levels of health care services.
• Allow health insurance policies to be purchased with pre-tax dollars.
• Expand the use of tax-free health saving accounts by allowing the funds to pay for monthly premiums as well as out-of-pocket expenses.
• Allow families to buy primary health care services directly from their doctors of choice, and then purchase inexpensive high-deductible policies to insure against catastrophic illness.
• Do not allow the IRS to fine or penalize individuals who choose not to purchase health insurance.
I have always believed that Government should work FOR our families and the businesses that employ them, NOT AGAINST them. Solving our country’s health insurance problem will give our families more financial security and peace of mind.
I’m confident that our health insurance experience in Maine and other states, can help Congress find a successful free-market replacement to ObamaCare that increases health plan choices, reduces costs, and helps grow our economy and create more jobs for our hard-working families.
Congressman Bruce Poliquin
There never has been nor will there ever be a Republican alternative to the ACA
It is an emarrassment that more voters see no need to do their own thinking re health care generally
It just to easy to complain about the ACA and continue to vote for the like they do
Physicians For A National Health Program is a professional group advocating for the “single payer system”
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2015/may/aca-adding-billions-to-health-care-bureaucratic-waste-study
The below was culled from the above
“By way of alternatives, they point to traditional Medicare, which runs for about 2 percent overhead. Were the 22.5 percent overhead figure associated with the ACA to drop to traditional Medicare’s level, the U.S. would save $249.3 billion by 2022, they say.
The overhead rates of universal, single-payer systems such as Taiwan’s or Canada’s are even lower, closer to 1 percent, they write, adding that if the U.S. were to adopt a single-payer system, the savings on bureaucracy and paperwork would amount to about $375 billion annually, enough to provide high-quality, first-dollar coverage to all Americans.”
Mr Poliquin, can you address a single payer systema, which does appear to be the most efficient, and least cost way of providing health care?
More right-wing tripe. Too bad we can’t get rid of parties and do what’s best for the people.
Ideas full of good old fashioned common sense in a day when common sense is out of style.
“Without a plan, Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-Maine) argued consumers would face chaos in the market if the Supreme Court rules against subsidies to buy ObamaCare on the federal marketplace.”
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/19/1385733/-Panic-starts-to-set-in-among-some-Republicans-over-Supreme-Court-Obamacare-decision?detail=emai
Also:
“Snowe said that having the subsidies available only to those using the state exchanges was “never part of our conversations at any point.”“Why would we have wanted to deny people subsidies? It was not their fault if their state did not set up an exchange,” she said.”
http://pollways.bangordailynews.com/2015/05/26/health-care/snowe-subsidies-obamacare/
If you like to see how a single-payer system works, look at our VA system. THAT is our preview of the federal government taking over. Not pretty!
Our VA system is NOT an example of a single payer system
It is a classic text book illustration of “socialized medicine” wherein everything is owned and with care delivered personnel employed by the government; likewise the Indian health are system
Canada’s system is single payer and it works and has been working for quite a while
T R Reid’s Healing Of America is an excellent factual survey/overview of health care system world wide
This is a disappointment, not a plan. We are the richest country in the world, the only developed country without a single payer plan, as citizens pay more per capita for health care than any nation in the world, and still fall into the bottom ranks of second world countries when health consequences are evaluated. I had hoped that Mr. Poliquin, as a fiscal and social conservative, could understand these simple facts and get us started on a road that makes sense from an economic and health perspective. It appears that is not going to happen.
In 2010, forty-three thousand Canadians came to the USA for medical procedures out of 30 million people or went to Cuba for treatments. Most of it due to waiting time.
It’s time for the U.S. to catch up to the rest of the industrialized world with a single-payer system.
When the right wing GOP actually HAVE a plan would be the time to discuss their so-called plan.
And most of the procedures were elective.
It is too easy to spout “sound bites” and simply criticize something that one doesn’t like
It does take a bit more time to fact check most assertions/positions when the “stink test” suggests there may be more to it
http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-03-2012/myths-canada-health-care.html
The author of the above link closes with the below
“So feel free to have a discussion about the relative merits of the U.S. and Canadian health care systems. Just stick to the facts.”
Drop the age-qualifier (65) and original Medicare would be a “single payer”
system. It’s a system that works pretty well.
But it’s not free. Part B monthly deductions come out of a senior’s Social Security monthly benefit. It doesn’t cover the cost of prescription medications. Nevertheless, “a Medicare-for-all” single-payer system would be a good start to deliver health care without trying to re-invent the wheel.
The United States is not the world’s richest country according to the 2015 list. We’re the 7th richest out of the top 10.
http://itsgr9.com/top-10-richest-countries-in-the-world/
Still, we’re far behind many countries on many levels. We’ve got a lot to catch up on. We’re not who we used to be decades ago.
All VA systems are different. Depending upon which city you are in, the VA hospital care varies. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.
Depending upon where you live in this country, your healthcare support (if you cannot afford healthcare insurance) varies. This was long before “Obamacare.”
Maine is just far behind in healthcare insurance support. You will be seen, but you will be left with a whopper of a bill to pay out of pocket, hence many people delay or nix medical care all together. If you’re sick in the first place, who needs to become sicker worrying how you’re going to pay your hospital bill? People should not have to worry about that. It’s not healthy!
The basic premise of the ACA, and indeed the basic premise for any insurance, or any sort to function, is to have broad base of insurers.
Eliminating younger people from paying into a health insurance program defeats the premise.
Making sick people pay higher premiums, defeats the premise as well as increases the burden on those who can least afford it.
Preventive care lowers the total cost of care.
Maine is one of the oldest, sickest, fattest states. Way to go all you who voted for Poliquin.
Oh yeah, the VA ,the government- or the people, depending on how you want to define it, has pretty much screwed veterans going back to the Revolution and even before. Something to consider before enlisting.
If we all got behind the ACA, if we as a nation said, with the same conviction that we said we would win WWII, “Let’s make this work, lets all just stop whining and do it”, it would work. If we all accepted that we have to pay for it, if employers accepted it, and if they needed to raise the price of goods and services to do it, and it was universal- it would work, just like Social security worked. Just like Medicare worked. Just like we won a war. We all accepted the need and made that initial sacrifice for the betterment of all.
Instead, we whine, we try to weasel out of commitments, we complain, we worry that somebody else is getting something for nothing, that we are paying too much.
We have gone from being a proud nation that leads, to a bunch of sniveling whiners who can’t accomplish anything.
Tiny little countries with practically no resources, in areas with severe climates, like Norway and Sweden, have higher standards of living, healthier populations, higher per capita income, and happier citizens.
Amazing the blind faith liberals have in government.
There has never been a problem with our healthcare system that required government intervention. Prior to Obamacare 80% of Americans were happy with the health care they received. It has always been a manufactured “problem” for politicians to rally the uninformed. The idea that the government can improve on a system that 80+% of Americans year in and year out are happy with, is ridiculous.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/159455/americans-satisfaction-health-coverage-slips-slightly.aspx
And people commenting here want to go single payer and they actually believe it will be better. How sad.
@ FTown Bryan
Wow, where did you pull that statistic from?
Perhaps, it was, 80% of those who have health insurance are happy with it?
But, that doesn’t take into account the millions who didn’t have it. Couldn’t get it, and or couldn’t afford it.
@ FTown Brian: “…the health care they received” ? Millions received very little, if any, health care…they didn’t have insurance.
A more recent poll: Gallup Poll: 70% Happy with Obamacare health plans
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obamacare-gallup-healthcare-gov/2014/11/14/id/607380/
“Fifty-eight percent of Republicans, as well as 82 percent of Democrats, support states creating their own marketplaces so that the subsidies can continue.”
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/236248-poll-obamacare-approval-ticks-up
@snowman,
The poll was not for those only with insurance the question asked had nothing to do with insurance. The question was simply are you satisfied with the health care you receive? Prior to Obamacare it was consistently over 80%. Time will tell how Obamacare affects this.
To further prove my point of healthcare as a manufactured issue, here is another poll that asks specifically about the cost of healthcare. Individuals consistently view their satisfaction 30-40 percentage points higher than their perception of the satisfaction of everyone else.
Proves media and politician hype.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/165998/americans-views-healthcare-quality-cost-coverage.aspx
@Elmira,
Who cares whether or not people on exchange plans are 70% satisfied. Obamacare was destined, like all liberal programs, to make the minority 20% better at the expense of the other 80%. Of course people with ACA plans are happy. They are the 20%.
Why don’t you ask the other 80%. Or better yet, ask them next year after the cadillac tax hits.
I reject the notion that everyone is entitled to the same healthcare. Those of us who work hard and pay taxes deserve better care than the layabouts. Furthermore, there is a large portion of the population that simply don’t value healthcare. You and I will never agree on this, so lets just leave it at that.
FTown Bryan:
This is what the sampling was:
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Nov. 7-10, 2013, on the annual Gallup Health & Healthcare poll, with a random sample of 1,039 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
First of all- that survey is nearly two years old.
I believe the current population estimate for the nation is approx. 300 million. 300,000,000/1039
That’s something like .000000034% I don’t have a lot of confidence in that. In fact, several recent polls have been wildly off the mark, the election in Israel, the elections in Great Britain and even our own recent gubernatorial race. If polls can so wrong, so can surveys.
Add in that many, many people no longer have land lines, esp. those under the age of 30 and many who are below the median income level. Most surveys do not call cell numbers. With Caller ID, most people don’t pick up the phone for caller’s they don’t recognize. Those that do tend to be older. That can skew the results.
I know people who felt satisfied with their care, but not what it cost. That was true even when it became obvious that they were not getting adequate care. People tend to like a nice doctor, even if he/her is incompetent vs. a competent doctor who is not pleasant.
What the survey did not address, yet what we see constantly in the Bulldog comments, is that people are not happy with paying taxes to cover other’s healthcare. Yet, without universal care, that is precisely what we do.
As a nation, as a state, we don’t just leave people lying sick in the street. That cost gets absorbed by all of us, in taxes and it gets absorbed in the economy with those who go bankrupt over health costs.
Study after study has shown that being overwhelmed by healthcare costs is the primary reason for personal bankruptcy in the US.