As I said following the initial committee vote in July, I voted against the House’s health care reform bill in the Education and Labor Committee because it failed to effectively rein in rising health care costs; it was punitive toward small businesses; and it paid for reform by raising taxes, rather than by squeezing the inefficiencies out of and modernizing our health care system.So it's the cost.
After months of negotiation, I believe that the bill we voted on today contained some improvements in each of these three areas, although these improvements were not sufficient for me to be able to vote for the bill. In particular, I remain concerned that the House’s health care reform bill still fails to make our health care system more cost-efficient. Until we rein in skyrocketing health care costs, we will simply be perpetuating an inefficient system that is unsustainable over time.
This bill is inadequate in two key areas that are critical to meaningful health care reform: cost containment and delivery system reform. Although I was unable to support this particular bill, I strongly believe that we need common-sense health care reform. I will continue working with my colleagues in the House and the Senate to create a bill that will preserve what works in our current system, reduce health care costs for American families and small businesses, and build a payment structure that better incentivizes efficiency, value and quality of care.
November 9, 2009
Congressman Altmire Responds
From his website:
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3 comments:
"In particular, I remain concerned that the House’s health care reform bill still fails to make our health care system more cost-efficient. Until we rein in skyrocketing health care costs, we will simply be perpetuating an inefficient system that is unsustainable over time."
I assume then he will relinquish his and his family's health care policy -- and urge all of his friends and constituents also to go without health insurance until the present system improves. By taking part in the present inefficient system, he is only perpetuating it, right? He should go without coverage like the millions of Americans for whom he just denied it, for the same reasons.
This bill will provide health care to something like 30 million more Americans -- of course that will increase net health care expenditures, no big surprise. But we get something in return for those expenditures: a lot more people receiving the sort of health care he presently has no objection to receiving himself.
We;ll, perhaps Congress and the President should go on Medicaid, not give up their health care. They should be covered only at the low income clinics, forced to wait for hours to see a doctor and forced to pay a huge co-pay.
Meanwhile, the reasoning is sort of amusing. Altmire will not compromise with America's future. If the bill is not exactly to his liking, then he will vote against it. His former employers will have to continue to make huge amounts of "excess revenue" (they are willing to make the sacrifice) until Congress is willing to make them contain costs.
nope, not 1 cent, not one vote, nothing ever again.
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