Republican Response on Healthcare

Senate Republican Whip John Kyl gave this week's Republican address on the topic of healthcare reform. Here's the video.

Kyl emphasized that Republicans have proposed:

common-sense ideas, including rooting out Medicare and Medicaid fraud, reforming medical liability laws to discourage frivolous lawsuits, strengthening wellness and prevention programs that encourage healthy living, and allowing small businesses to band together and purchase health insurance like large corporations do.

These changes do not require government takeover of the healthcare system, or massive new spending, job-killing taxes, or rationing of care.

The Democrats, in contrast,

would increase spending by more than two trillion dollars when fully implemented, and would, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, add additional costs onto an already unsustainable system.

Note in particular what Democrats would do to Medicare. Why isn't the AARP and the like objecting to this? Their constituents are about to lose a benefit that can literally mean the difference between life and death. As Kyl put it,

The President and Congressional Democrats have even proposed cutting Medicare to pay for their plan.

How can we justify dipping into funds for seniors’ care to pay for a new government plan, especially since Medicare is already in financial trouble? This would ultimately lead to shortages, rationing, and the elimination of private-plan choices—something our seniors rightly fear.

And then there is the effect on small businesses, the backbone of our economy:

They propose to pay for this new Washington-run health care system by dramatically raising taxes on small business owners. Small businesses create jobs -- approximately two-thirds of new jobs in the last decade.

With a shaky economy and the need for new jobs, the last thing the President and the Congress should do is impose new taxes on America’s small businesses. New taxes on small business would cripple job creation, especially jobs for low-wage earners.

This is just too important to rush through before the August recess -- and before Americans have an opportunity to become informed on Democratic plans.