What They’re Saying About Republicans’ Patient-Centered Health Care Plan

House Ways and Means Committee Republicans

What They're Saying About Republicans' Patient-Centered Health Care Plan

Last week, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) joined Speaker Paul Ryan and other House Republicans to unveil "A Better Way to Fix Health Care." The plan offers the American people a patient-centered alternative to the failed health care policies of the Obama Administration.

As one of four committee chairmen spearheading the Health Care Reform Task Force, Chairman Brady explained:

"By every measure, the Affordable Care Act is hurting more people than it's helping. Folks are having to pay more and more for less and less health care... We are absolutely convinced there is a better way. Our approach is a step-by-step approach that takes care of every American at every stage of their life... we propose a health care backpack. A backpack that can travel with you throughout your life -- from job to job, state to state, home to start a business or raise a family, and, if it's a backpack and plan that works for you, into your retirement years as well."

Here's what leading conservatives and health care experts are saying about the plan:

Joseph Antos and James Capretta in Health Affairs Blog "It's an ambitious plan, and represents a real milestone... House Republican leaders have taken an important step toward defining for the country an approach to reform that differs in important ways from current policy."

Nina Owcharenko in The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal "The 37-page document offers a vision for health care that is in sharp contrast to Obamacare. Unlike Obamacare, which hinges on turning more control over to the government, this vision recognizes and embraces the important role of the consumer in demanding from the market higher quality care at lower cost... It identifies the core challenges facing the health care system, starting with the damage done by Obamacare, and offers a broad list of policy recommendations that begin to move the health care reform in a different direction: one that is more patient-centered, market-based."

Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473971-29030369] "The House GOP also released a detailed proposal to replace ObamaCare with a package of reforms centered on the patient and doctor. These include making health insurance portable so workers can take it from job to job, increasing the use of health savings accounts, permitting insurance sales across state lines, allowing small businesses and individuals to band together to get lower prices, expanding wellness programs and reforming medical liability."

Ryan Ellis in Forbes [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473972-29030369] "In sum, the plan would be a very large net tax cut from current law. The plan is also designed to be a net spending cut and a net deficit cut from current law. That's the triple crown for limited government conservatives."

Doug Holtz-Eakin in American Action Forum's Daily Dish "It is better economic policy because it makes the health sector look like the rest of the economy -- built on competition, rewarding quality and low-costs, and evolving flexibly to meet the needs of the customer base. It is a far cry from the top-down, industrial-age Obamacare spigot of federal dollars and regulations. Often health care reforms look like lists. But the most important feature -- the one that is genuinely a better way -- is to trust families, doctors, hospitals, device makers, and the remainder of the health sector to respond to market incentives and deliver high-quality care."

Americans for Tax Reform [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473974-29030369] "Obamacare has approached healthcare with a "government knows best" mentality, and the GOP blueprint draws a sharp contrast by calling for increased choice and competition in order to lower costs, improve quality, and ensure all Americans have access to the healthcare that best suits their individual needs."

Heritage Action [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473975-29030369] "The House Republican Health Care Task Force's report shows that Republicans understand that a better health care system requires the repeal of Obamacare. Admirably, it proposes a number of patient-centered reforms to the employer and individual market, as well as a fundamental rethinking of the health entitlement programs--Medicare and Medicaid--that are driving our country deeper into debt and failing seniors and low income Americans."

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473976-29030369] "Republicans create a series of avenues that allow everyone who wants insurance coverage (via employer, self-funded, Medicaid or Medicare) to get it."

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, M.D. in Forbes [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473977-29030369] "The healthcare plan released today by House Speaker Paul Ryan offers a modern refashioning of the consumer empowerment that has formed the foundation of conservative policymaking. This turns principally on an expansion of health savings accounts, and other elements that re-shape the healthcare benefit into a defined contribution of money that consumers can own and control, and that becomes more portable."

Opportunity Lives [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473978-29030369] "By eliminating the 'knot of regulations, taxes and mandates' ushered in by Obamacare, and instead focusing on a 'patient-centered reform' approach, Republican lawmakers plan to foster an environment in which individuals would no longer be forced into an ill-fitting insurance plan, according to a draft of the new agenda."

Avik Roy in Forbes [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473979-29030369] "The Paul Ryan-led House of Representatives has done something it has not done before: it has released a comprehensive, 37-page proposal to reform nearly every federal health care program, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare... all in all, we would have a far better health care system with the Ryan plan than we do today."

Americans for Prosperity [http://waysandmeansforms.house.gov/Components/Redirect/r.aspx'ID=473980-29030369] "The plan focuses on four primary objectives: making health care more affordable, improving access to care, allowing for greater options and flexibility in health care coverage, and improving the overall quality of health care delivery. The report from the task force notes that all the policies mentioned in the report share the common thread of being "patient-centered," rather than a top-down approach to health care, dictated to Americans by a detached government in Washington."