Nine Republican senators are urging President Barack Obama to facilitate more inclusive reform of America’s health care system and say the creation of a public insurance option would “inevitably doom true competition.”
Orrin Hatch
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and other Republican Finance Committee members penned a letter to Obama June 8, voicing their opposition to a government-run plan in health care reform. Signing the letter were Hatch and Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), John Ensign (R-Nev.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), and John Cornyn (R-Texas).
The group called the creation of a public health insurance option “one of the more divisive issues in the health care reform debate,” pointing out that existing government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid “are already on a path to fiscal insolvency.”
In addition to negative cost-shifting to consumers, the senators also pointed to a Lewin Group study that indicates 119.1 million Americans would lose their private coverage under a government open to all and offering Medicare-level reimbursements.
“Washington-run programs undermine market-based competition through their ability to impose price controls and shift costs to other purchasers,” the group wrote. “Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition.”
The group concluded the letter by pledging their support to work across party lines and “focus on areas of compromise” to get to true reform.
On the same day the letter was sent to the president, the Public Campaign Action Fund indicated that the nine senators voicing opposition to a public plan benefited from a combined $17.7 million in campaign donations from health care and insurance industries. Split among the nine Republicans, that amounts to nearly $2 million per politician over their careers.
The fund is a non-profit dedicated to comprehensive public financing of elections.
“Americans want a government that is responsive to our needs, not a Congress that listens to its donors from the insurance and health care industry,” David Donnelly, national campaigns director of Public Campaign Action Fund, said in a statement. “These Senators appear to be carrying water for their donors at the expense of advancing health care reform.”
The group pointed out that Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the Finance Committee’s only Republican member not to sign the letter, and she has taken $1.1 million from the same interests.
Senate Republicans voice opposition to government-run health insurance via IFAwebnews.com .
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