GOP senators warn, government insurance option would be "a gateway to a single-payer system"
01 07 09 - 12:11
GOP forum airs health care issues
By TODD ACKERMAN - Houston Chronicle
Calling the debate on health care reform a seminal moment for domestic policy, three Republican U.S. senators brought the GOP case to the Texas Medical Center Tuesday.
At a gathering of local doctors and other professionals at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Sens. John Cornyn, John McCain and Mitch McConnell warned that a government insurance option would be “a gateway to a single-payer system.”
“This is where the government option is a competitor but the government’s not exactly a fair competitor,” said Cornyn, of Texas, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which is considering health care reform proposals. “It’s an 800-pound gorilla that has the capacity to undermine other competitors. We want to make sure we don’t do anything to crush the kind of innovation that has led to cures and happier and healthier lives in Texas and around the world.”
Cornyn and McCain pointed to a recent Congression-al Budget Office review that found that the Kennedy-Dodd bill now gaining traction would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years and cover about one-third of the roughly 45 million now uninsured.
Getting an earful
The invitation-only event, organized by Cornyn, is part of the GOP’s congressional-break effort to build opposition to President Barack Obama’s ambitious plan to reform health care. The issue is expected to take center stage when Congress reconvenes Monday.
Prominent Houston health officials did give senators an earful about all that they felt was wrong with the current system, from the financial impact of illegal immigrant patients to insurance company greed to a doctor’s limits if the individual doesn’t take responsibility for his or her health.
“The status quo is not an option,” Dr. Kenneth Mattox, chief of staff at Ben Taub General Hospital, told the senators.
Mattox and Dr. Larry Kaiser, president of the UT Health Science Center at Houston, said they were impressed that doctors’ concerns were acknowledged and taken seriously by the senators. They even said they liked the forum’s partisan nature, somewhat unusual at a state academic institution, because it suggested the senators were open to dialogue.
McCain, of Arizona, a member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said after the forum that the issues raised by doctors that most resonated with him were the need for greater transparency of costs and nationwide malpractice reform that would stop doctors from having to practice “defensive medicine.”
McCain’s alternative
McCain touted as an alternative to Obama’s plan his 2008 presidential campaign platform to give every family in America a $5,000 refundable tax credit, which they could take anyplace to select the policy they want.
Mattox said the health care industry is the most regulated in the world, with “hassle, paperwork, overhead and malpractice insurance” amounting to 50 percent of the cost of health care. Instead of “picking on us in research, education and patient care,” he said government could reduce health care costs from 15 percent to 7 percent if it got rid of such regulation.
The event was the ninth Cornyn has sponsored in Texas in recent weeks. It was the first in which he was joined by McCain and McConnell, of Kentucky, the Republican leader of the Senate.
todd.ackerman@chron.com