Don Manzullo’s press release concerning the health care repeal vote today:

Manzullo Votes to Repeal Costly Health Care Law
Rep. supports replacement bills that make health care more affordable, available

(WASHINGTON) U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL) today voted to repeal the President’s $1 trillion health care law and start working on a replacement bill that makes health care more affordable and accessible to the uninsured without putting millions more Americans on the unemployment lines. The House passed the bill 245 to 189.

There has been intense interest in health care reform in McHenry County. Here people stand in line to ask Congressman Don Manzullo questions or to make comments at his 2009 Town Hall Meeting on the subject.

The new health care law, passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by the President last year, will wreak havoc on the American economy if not repealed because over the next few years it will:

• Increase taxes on Americans by $569 billion, including a 2.9 percent tax on live-saving medical devices and a 40 percent excise tax on “excessive” health coverage primarily utilized by union workers.
• Cut Medicare benefits for seniors by $530 billion
• Increase Americans’ health insurance premiums by an average of $2,100 per year.
• Put another 3 to 5 million Americans on the unemployment lines due to the heavy mandates that require employers to provide health care coverage to their employees and families whether they can afford it or not.
• Require the IRS to hire up to 16,500 additional workers to enforce all the new tax penalties on Americans who can’t afford to purchase health insurance.
• Make Americans wait until 2014 to receive the bulk of the benefits. In fact, the ban on pre-existing conditions doesn’t kick in until 2014 for adults.
• Put another 15 million Americans on the cash-strapped Medicaid program and burden states with additional Medicaid share costs. The State of Illinois would have to pay $1.8 billion in additional Medicaid sharing costs to cover the additional enrollments.

Don Manzullo listening to his constituents at McHenry County College in 2009.

“Americans are already seeing the disastrous affects of the new health care law through higher insurance premiums and reductions in coverage, and it’s going to get much worse,” Manzullo said. “Fortunately, the most onerous provisions will not kick in for another few years and we have time to repeal this job-destroying law and replace it with real reforms that make health care more affordable and accessible before further damage is done to our economy.“

Manzullo is urging Senate Majority Leader Reid and President Obama to join the House in supporting repeal of the health care law so all sides can come together to craft replacement bills. Manzullo supports the following changes to America’s health care system:

1. Allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until Age 26 – This provision was one of the few bipartisan elements of the President’s health care bill and it should stay in the replacement bill. Millions of young adults are kicked off their parents’ insurance plans after high school or college and often go without insurance for years until they get jobs that offer health insurance. Because health care costs for young adults are extremely low, the cost of keeping them on their parents’ insurance plans is minimal.
2. Reforming our out-of-control medical liability system – Medical malpractice insurance continues to surge, skyrocketing health care costs and forcing doctors and other medical professionals to practice “defensive medicine,” which entails ordering costly and often unnecessary tests to cover all the bases from lawsuits. Manzullo supports legislation that would fully compensate victims for medical injuries but place reasonable caps on punitive and non-economic damages that often inflate the awards and contribute to out-of-control liability and health care costs.
3. Expanding tax-free availability to Health Savings Accounts — HSAs allow small business owners to offer more affordable high-deductible health insurance plans to their employees and make tax-deductible contributions to employee savings accounts to allow their employees to build equity and assume personal control of their health care needs. Congress should increase the tax deductibility for these insurance plans.
4. Preserving high-quality health care through America’s community health clinics – Manzullo supports continued funding of our community health clinic system, which provides high-quality health care to America’s low-income families. Manzullo has been a strong supporter of Rockford’s Crusader Clinic, which serves more than 40,000 needy patients in northern Illinois each year.
5. Making permanent the deduction health insurance costs from Social Security and Medicare taxes for self-employed individuals – The self-employed pay both the employer and employee share of the payroll tax. Continuing this tax deduction would reduce health insurance costs by 15 percent for this very difficult sub-group of Americans to insure. This proposal would also keep the self-employed at parity with larger companies, who already pay health insurance expenses for their employees before remitting their payroll taxes.
6. Establishing Universal Access Programs for those with pre-existing conditions – These programs would fully fund and reform state high-risk pools and reinsurance programs to guarantee that all Americans – regardless of pre-existing conditions or past illnesses, have access to affordable care.
7. Allowing Americans to buy insurance across state lines – This simple change would increase competition and lower health care costs for all.