Partisanship won’t cure health woes – The Daily Local News : Serving Chester County
By JIM GERLACH, Guest Columnist

Medical care is one area where politics and partisanship should not matter.

Patients choose their doctors based on the quality of care and expertise of the provider, not party affiliation.

Doctors do not treat patients from one political party and not the other. Nor do doctors consider whether the drugs they prescribe were patented by a Republican or a Democrat.

Congressional leaders need to take the same approach as they attempt to come up with legislative remedies for our nation’s health insurance system.

Pretty much everyone agrees on the diagnosis.

The current system has left approximately 46 million Americans without health insurance coverage. Further, small businesses and job creators are struggling to provide coverage for employees and their dependents due to skyrocketing premiums.

More than half — about 27 million — of those in America without insurance are small business owners, their employees and dependents, according to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

While 180 million Americans have employer-provided health insurance, I know that many small businesses want to provide coverage to their workers, but simply cannot keep pace with the rising cost of premiums. The NFIB reported that premiums have increased 113 percent during the last decade.

That’s why I have joined with Congressman Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, in sponsoring H.R. 2360, the proposed Small Business Health Options Program Act.

This bipartisan legislation would lower the cost and expand access to health insurance coverage for millions of hard-working Americans.

Those goals would be achieved without costly mandates on job creators or a massive expansion of government into doctors’ offices.

The SHOP Act would offer small businesses tax credits of up to $2,000 per year for each employee to provide family coverage for their workers, while self-employed individuals would qualify for tax credits of up to $1,800 annually.

Family farmers, small businesses and other job creators also would be permitted to band together to purchase coverage by participating in statewide and national pools.

This would give small companies the same kind of bargaining power large corporations have wielded for years when shopping for cost-effective coverage.

And the SHOP Act would ban health status ratings in order to protect businesses from large rate spikes simply because one employee gets sick.

In addition to enjoying bipartisan support in the House, this legislation has been endorsed by an array of groups normally on opposite sides of issues, including NFIB, AARP, Service Employees International Union, and National Partnership for Women and Families.

So far this year, congressional leaders have shown little interest in taking the time to debate a broad range of solutions to some of our nation’s biggest challenges.

However, the upcoming debate on various health insurance proposals will provide another chance for congressional leaders to abandon ideology in favor of common-sense solutions.

We’ll see if congressional leaders act more like physicians or politicians.

(Congressman Jim Gerlach represents the 6th Congressional District, which covers parts of Chester, Montgomery, Berks and Lehigh counties.)

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