To pay for all the waste in Obamacare, the law turned to age-old government tactics to close the gap between what the program cost and how much America could afford to pay for it: rationing and tax increases.
But Americans want more choice and were promised lower costs. Obamacare hasn’t delivered any of that. In fact, Obamacare has actually taken away choice in health care, strained people’s wallets, and even put a tax on the innovators who have revolutionized medicine in the modern age.
The House will vote to repeal two of the worst parts of Obamacare—a review board charged with rationing senior care and the medical device tax—to give the people what they expect from health care and stop the threat Obamacare poses to medical innovation.
Putting an End to Senior Care Rationing
When it comes to rationing, Obamacare targets seniors. The law’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will act as a de facto rationing body by cutting certain providers, which effectively stops access to care.
What’s worse, the board will be made up of 15 unelected bureaucrats who don’t ever have to listen to the people—most importantly the seniors—that their decisions affect. That means 15 “experts” decide the value of medical services, not you and your doctor.
The House will respond with the Protecting Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act (H.R. 1190), which repeals IPAB and offsets the cost with cuts to an Obamacare slush fund that provides money for everything from zumba classes to pet neutering.
Repealing the Job-Killing Medical Device Tax
A bipartisan majority in the House is also working together to end the widely unpopular medical device tax, which destroys jobs, hampers innovation, and threatens seniors’ access to and the development of lifesaving devices that seniors rely on. America has led the way in developing technology that revolutionizes the way we prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases. Yet Obamacare punishes the very companies that made America the global leader in medical innovation with this tax, putting new, lifesaving technologies at risk.
To finally put an end the medical device tax, the House will pass the Protect Medical Innovation Act (H.R. 160).
The medical device tax repeal already passed the House in previous years with wide bipartisan support, a testament to how harmful this part of Obamacare really is.
Rationing and cost increases won’t truly end until Obamacare is repealed and replaced with a patient-centered system that relies on the free market to bring the best quality care at the lowest price. Until then, the American people are hurting because of Obamacare, and the House is doing everything it can to lessen that burden.