From Congressman Lamar Smith
On November 7th 2009 Congress considered the health care bill H.R. 3962. I voted against the bill and voiced my opposition. It passed 220 to 215.
Click here to see my
press release statement. I support health care reform; however this bill goes far beyond fixing the problems we all know need to be addressed. Any health care legislation should reduce health care costs and ensure that our health care system is more accountable and accessible to patients.
H.R. 3962 mandates a gradual government takeover of the health care industry. This bill increases premiums increases taxes by more than $550 billion cut Medicare benefits by more than $450 billion imposes new tax penalties of more than $165 billion fails to address medical liability reform requires many to change their current coverage and leads to rationing of health care. For these reasons and others the legislation encountered strong bipartisan opposition with 39 Democrats voting against it.
I supported an alternative plan that would have expanded access to affordable health care coverage for Americans without increasing premiums and taxes or cutting benefits to seniors. It included medical liability reforms modeled after the successful reforms of several states including Texas which would save over $54 billion in unnecessary health care costs.
To read more about this alternative plan
please click here.
The Senate will now begin their debate on health care legislation which could last several weeks. I encourage you to sign up for my health care e-newsletter to receive the most recent updates on the Congressional health care debate.
