Obamacare is Big Brother at its worst and must be repealed. 

The goals of any government overhaul of our health care system must be to improve quality, accessibility and affordability. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, fails on all three counts. Plus, the individual mandate is unconstitutional – as I believe the Supreme Courts will find this summer. 

Obamacare is nothing less than an attempt to impose a “single payer” system on America’s diversity. Its advocates admit that it is the first step toward universal health coverage in a system that is federally-funded and federally-managed. That is a recipe for disaster. Even Canada is backing away from government-mandated health coverage as more and more Canadians flock across the borders to New York and other states to get life-saving operations that have been rationed in their own country. 

I believe we need free market solutions that respect the choices of individuals, enhance competition, and promote innovation. These reforms will in turn improve accessibility and drive down costs.

We need to repeal Obamacare and replace it with true free market reforms.

The advances in medicine in recent decades have been dramatic. Breast and prostate cancer survival rates have dramatically improved, while new “wonder drugs” have expanded the life expectancies of ordinary Americans. 

And yet, through its “top-down” approach to our health delivery system, Obamacare threatens innovation by appointing panels to determine what type of procedures will be permitted for Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance reimbursement. It quashes free market competition by determining the structure of health coverage plans and establishing one-size-fits-all payment methods. And it threatens the development of new life-saving drugs by using the Food and Drug Administration to impose expensive and unreasonable delays in the approval of new drugs. 

The Democrats argue that Obamacare will dramatically reduce costs, but in fact these alleged future cost savings simply shift the costs to individuals and small businesses by driving up the cost of private health care premiums, and to the states by dumping millions of uninsured Americans into state Medicaid programs. (14% of Marylanders today are on Medicaid, and that number will grow dramatically as Obamacare kicks in). 

Taken together, the Democrats’ solutions to our health care problems amounts to rationing, reduced quality of care, more government mandates and price controls. 

I will work with my colleagues in Congress to ensure that more Americans will own their own health care policies and be able to take them from employer to employer (“portability”). 

I will work to make it easier to buy health insurance across state lines.

 I will work for real tort reform, so doctors don’t go broke buying malpractice insurance and can get back to the business of treating their patients. 

I will work to get rid of ridiculous mandates that drive up the cost of private insurance. Here in Maryland, we have over 60 of them, including things such as in-vitro fertilization and hair implants. I have no problem with elective procedures such as these, but why should everybody have to pay for them? 

The doctor-patient relationship should be at the core of our health care system, not some government bureaucracy. I will work to reduce the weight of government bureaucracy on both doctors and patients. 

We need to unleash the genius of the free market, not tie its hands with more government red tape.