Turner at a protest of the health care bill Saturday in Albuquerque. (Courtesy photo)
Sunday’s vote won’t end our health-care debates – it will only start new ones. With a reconciliation vote in the Senate coming shortly (as of the time of this article being published), and more disputes in the House likely to follow, I encourage concerned lawmakers to use any and all legislative tactics on hand to stop the reconciliation bill from passing the Senate’s next vote and to fix the legislation passed by the Houses of Congress.
HR3590 is unconstitutional, burdensome to business and is harmful to patients and families. Let me explain.
This 10-year, $940 billion plan is the biggest expansion of the social safety net since the 1960s, when Medicare and Medicaid were created. This sweeping legislation will also touch every New Mexican, but in a negative way: Insurance premiums and government spending will increase; there will be doctor shortages and loss of specialists in rural communities; the quality of care will drop and some will even be turned away from expensive procedures by our government.
Lovelace, Blue Cross, Aetna and all the others will become national public utilities, governed by Congress and the Health and Human Services Department. This will surely cause our health care choices to suffer.
My brother is a medical doctor, as was my grandfather. I’ve heard health care discussed at the dinner table as long as I can remember. Now, with two young children of my own, I fear what they will face. This bill will cost New Mexico jobs because it encumbers New Mexican companies.
Witness the recent Caterpillar Inc. announcement that due to a stray provision about the tax treatment of retiree benefits, this bill will increase Caterpillar’s health care costs by $100 million in the first year alone. Such harmful surprises lay ahead for many businesses in the state.
House Minority Leader John Boehner indicates that the “revised” health care bill is worse than the original legislation. He has promised that the “American people are going to hear about every payoff, every kickback and every sweetheart deal that comes out.”
There is no doubt that Americans deserve access to affordable health care, but we must find ways to improve services and reduce costs that do not create deficit spending, hidden taxes, inferior health care services and expensive new federal bureaucracies.
As New Mexico’s next governor, I will join with Virginia, Idaho and other states and file lawsuit after lawsuit against this bill. We can do better. We must do better.
Turner is a Republican candidate for governor.