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Download complete text: H.R. 3590
FORT WAYNE — The take on the historic health care legislation that passed Sunday was as divided as Congress between Rep. Mark Souder, R-Fort Wayne, and his lone Democratic rival, Dr. Tom Hayhurst of Fort Wayne.
Souder voted against the health care bill, which was approved during a rare Sunday session of the U.S. House of Representatives. Hayhurst, though not familiar with the specifics of the legislation, generally favors it, he said Saturday while visiting Angola.
“Health care can be a crippling expense for families and employers, and I strongly believe that Congress should pass legislation to make insurance more affordable, ensure that individuals with pre-existing conditions can receive coverage and address the need for catastrophic coverage,” Souder said on his Web site. “However, a government takeover of health care is not the answer. A better approach would be to focus on reform that controls costs and increases competition amongst insurance companies.”
Speaking generally about health care reform, Hayhurst said, “There are some principles there that I think are important that could help the pocketbooks of the people of northeast Indiana.”
Hayhurst said half of the bankruptcies in Indiana can be attributed to people getting buried in health care bills and it needed to be more affordable.
“The health care issue is very important to me because I’m a doc,” said Hayhurst, who helped start the Wolf Lake Free Health Clinic in Noble County.
The legislation, affecting virtually every American and more than a year in the making, would extend coverage to an estimated 32 million uninsured, bar insurers from denying coverage on the basis of existing medical conditions and cut federal deficits by an estimated $138 billion over a decade. Congressional analysts estimate the cost of the two bills combined would be $940 billion over a decade.
“It’s hard to believe the Democrats are bragging about spending nearly a trillion dollars with money from Medicare cuts for seniors,” Souder said Thursday.
Hayhurst said the basic tenets of the bill were good, but if elected, he hoped to improve on the legislation.
“With regard to my job in November, after it passes, my job will be to make it more cost effective,” Hayhurst said.
Under the legislation, most Americans would be required to purchase insurance, and face penalties if they refused. Much of the money in the bill would be devoted to subsidies to help families at incomes of up to $88,000 a year pay their premiums.
The legislation would also usher in a significant expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor. Coverage would be required for incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, $29,327 a year for a family of four. Childless adults would be covered for the first time, starting in 2014.
Last week, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, said he was opposed to expansion of health care for the poor because of the cost that would be borne by state government.
The insurance industry would come under new federal regulation. They would be forbidden from placing lifetime dollar limits on policies, from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions and from canceling policies when a policyholder becomes ill.
Parents would be able to keep older kids on their coverage up to age 26. A new high-risk pool would offer coverage to uninsured people with medical problems until 2014, when the coverage expansion goes into high gear.
Hayhurst said he would like to see greater reliance on free health clinics throughout Indiana to make sure no on falls through the gap when it comes to health care coverage. He also said he favored providing government funding to offset the private funding that keeps most free health clinics afloat. He said free clinics must remain free to patients and free of paid staff.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS contributed to this report.
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