Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee’s Senior Republican Member, today joined fellow members of the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group for a hearing that examined patient and doctor experiences with other countries’ government-run health care systems.
“This hearing looked at a side of government-run health care that its proponents have willfully ignored: the devastating personal consequences when care is rationed and treatments are denied," said Kline. “The gut-wrenching stories we heard today serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of a government-run health care system that puts bureaucrats between patients and their doctors. These are warnings we simply can’t afford to ignore."
Click the links below to view key excerpts from today’s hearing. For more information on Republican efforts to make health care more affordable, accessible, and available while protecting the relationship between patients and doctors, please visit the GOP Health Care Solutions Group website here.
Rep. Kline delivers opening remarks, saying of House Democrats' proposed legislation: “Our concerns are enormous. This legislation creates a new federal bureaucracy with a new commissioner we can only think of as a high commissioner because it’s an enormously powerful position to fundamentally, I believe, wreck the delivery of health care in this country."
Rep. Kline questions the hearing’s panel of witnesses. Noting widespread concerns that the Democrats’ proposed legislation would disproportionately harm small businesses, he asks in regard to health care reform: “What is it small businesses really want?" In response, Karen Kerrigan of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council explains: “They want their health insurance costs to go down, or at least to stabilize; those who don’t provide insurance, either for themselves or their employees, want access to affordable coverage; and there are solutions that have moved through the Congress previously and that have been proposed that will help them do that … More choice, more competition, and I just think some very simple, targeted reforms without taking over the whole system and making small business owners pay for it."
Richard Baker, founder of North American Surgery, Inc. and one of the panel’s witnesses, described the plight of a 28-year-old Canadian woman denied spinal surgery under the Canadian health care system. She was told by her surgeon, “You have not yet suffered long enough."
