Senate Republicans Decry Health Reform

By John DuBois

Talk Radio News Service-University of New Mexico

The America’s Affordable Health Choices Act that recently passed through the House has put Senate Republicans under pressure.

Quoting a March, 2009, speech by President Obama, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said that the “B” word (Bankruptcy) looms for the country. “That b word is showing up in more and more articles as the cost of health care keeps getting higher,” said Alexander.

In that speech, Obama said: “If people think we could can simply take everybody who’s not insured and load them up in the system where costs are out of control it’s not going to happen. We’ll run out of money and the federal government will be bankrupt and the state governments will be bankrupt.”

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that health reform will result in billions of dollars in new taxes nation-wide. The bill would drive up the cost of health insurance premiums and a six point seven billion dollar annual fee that will be imposed on insurers based on market share, she said.

“I have concluded that if any of these bills were to pass Health care costs would actually increase for many Americans the opposite of what we would want for health care reform to produce,” said Collins. “A 40-year-old today buying the most popular insurance policy in the individual market in the state of Maine pays $185 a month. Under the new Senate Finance Committee bill, that 40-year-old would have to pay at least $455 a month for a policy that meets the minimum standards because of new taxes.”

Collins said Democrats and Republicans should “put together a bipartisan bill, that would reduce the number of uninsured, not penalize small business, not drive up the cost of health care and would make a real difference. There are so many areas that have bipartisan agreement on what should be done. I would like to see us work together to try to put together a bill that would do just that. To me, we should rewrite the whole bill. I don’t know that my colleagues would all agree,” she said.