The upcoming election is a referendum on health care like this country has not before seen. Democrats are promising the radical elimination of Americans’ choice of private coverage and ending Medicare as we know it. And as part of their fearmongering, they are accusing Republicans of lacking ideas to expand access to affordable, quality health coverage for all.
This is wrong.
Republicans have a long track record of creating successful, popular coverage options— like Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Prescription Drug plan— and empowering Americans with tools to get in the driver’s seat of their health care decisions.
That experience means we know we need to build on what works rather than double-down on flawed one-size-fits all solutions. With a constructive approach, we will create an even brighter, more optimistic path forward that puts patients and families in control of their own health. In our new series, “The Way Forward,” Ways and Means GOP will outline proposals to lower costs, modernize services, expand access, and improve quality. This series will highlight both new ideas to accomplish these goals as well as provide reminders of creative policy solutions we have supported in the past.
Our work is rooted in a single principle: Every American deserves health care that works for them.
Everyone’s needs are different: Health care is important— and incredibly personal— for every American. An eighty-year-old woman on Medicare has different health care needs than a thirty-year old single mom. A forty-year-old business executive with health insurance at her job has different health care needs than a man who is unemployed.
Everyone deserves choice and control: Thirty million people under the age of 65 are still uninsured. How do we offer them lower cost, high quality, modern health care options?
Everyone deserves an abundant, effective, and innovative health care system. American innovation must continue to produce treatments and cures to help us and our loved ones stay healthy and live longer.
With these questions in mind, here is a common-sense framework for a Way Forward on modernized, personalized health care plan for people at every stage of life:
1. Protect people with pre-existing conditions, regardless of whether they get their health care from their employer, an individual insurance plan, or a government program like Medicare or Medicaid. Everyone will have access to affordable coverage regardless of a pre-existing condition. While this is the law of the land already, Congressional Republicans are prepared to work in a bipartisan way to restore those critical provisions should they be struck because the Supreme Court finds Democrats wrote a law that tramples on Americans’ constitutional rights. Here’s what we’ve already done.
2. Provide certainty and fairness for people by ending surprise medical bills and increasing transparency. When people’s health is uncertain, they deserve predictability from their care. Under our plan, no one will get an unexpected bill from an insurance company or medical provider. Here’s how we’d do it.
3. Improve coverage and lower costs for those who have job-based health insurance. These people deserve greater access to health savings accounts to purchase medicines and pay other out-of-pocket costs. And they deserve more options for portability, so when they lose their job, they don’t lose their coverage. Here’s how we’d do both.
4. Save and Strengthen Medicare. This critical entitlement program is careening toward insolvency. Here’s how our plan preserves the Medicare guarantee, here’s howit modernizes the drug benefit and here’s how it harnesses technology to deliver care through telehealth.
5. Incentivize innovation and cures. Private-sector research will continue to pave the way for new therapies and life-saving cures. Our plan increases research and development as well as invests in vaccines and therapies for infectious diseases like COVID-19. Here’s how.
6. More affordable options to expand coverage to those without insurance. Every American should be able to access more options for insurance. Here’s how we’d create those options.
We will continue to discuss these items— their history and future—and other policies as part of “The Way Forward,” a project by the Ways and Means GOP.
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