From Heritage:
Abstract:
Obamacare moves American health care in the wrong direction by eroding the doctor–patient relationship, centralizing control, and increasing health costs. True health care reform would empower individuals, with their doctors, to make their own health care decisions free from government interference. Therefore, Obamacare should be stopped and fully repealed. Then Congress and the states should enact patient-centered, market-based reforms that better serve Americans.
For a better life, Americans need a health care system that they, not the government, control. Consumers should have the ability to choose how to meet their health insurance needs in a free market for insurance. Taxpayers should benefit from a more efficient and affordable system for helping those who need health care but cannot afford it. Above all, patients, with their doctors, should make their own health care decisions free from government interference.
The important first step is to repeal the Obamacare statute that puts the government in charge of health care. The second step is to let the country move to a patient-centered, market-based system that focuses on citizens and not on the government.
Principles for Reform
To allow Americans to reclaim control of their own health care and benefit from competition in a free market for insurance and health care, Congress should repeal the Obamacare statute and enact patient-centered, market-based reforms based on five principles:
• Choose, control, and carry your own health insurance;
• Let free markets provide the insurance and health care services that people want;
• Encourage employers to provide a portable health insurance benefit to employees;
• Assist those who need help through civil society, the free market, and the states; and
• Protect the right of conscience and unborn children.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) moves health care in the wrong direction. It puts government, not patients, in charge of individual health care decisions. Moreover, it fails to meet the promises laid out by President Barack Obama. With each passing day, it becomes clearer that Obamacare will not reduce premiums for average American families, bend the cost curve in health care spending, or bring down the deficit. For these reasons, among others, Obamacare must be repealed.
However, a return to the status quo before Obamacare is not the final step. Policymakers should pursue reforms based on five basic principles. Adopting such reforms would move American health care in the right direction: toward a patient-centered, market-based health care system.
