Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Myrick's take on health care


Here's the view from U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, Charlotte Republican, as told to Washington correspondent Barbara Barrett:


Q: What are your top priorities for health reform?


Myrick: One of the things is immediate limitations on pre-existing conditions, exclusions…that kind of thing. … I think we need to have price transparency so people know the cost of what they're paying for.


Medical liability reform. The doctors pay a ton of money in insurance premiums in medical liability, and if the American people knew how much of the cost of their procedure or visit was attributed to medical liability, that is something they should have access to. … It's another hidden cost of health care. I support medical liability reform.


Also, quality reporting requirements for providers. To tie the payments they get to the quality of care they're given.


Q: How do you feel about the public option?


Myrick: The public option, as it's stated, I don't support. One of my biggest concerns is the thing nobody wants to talk about, and that's rationing. … In the bill, there's a new health care commissioner and what he's going to be able to do is literally decide … what's acceptable health care coverage and then set the rules on what that coverage could include as well as the treatments that people could receive and at what cost. And that amounts to rationing.


President Barack Obama is bringing his health care campaign to Raleigh today, for an 11:45 a.m. town hall event at Broughton High School. Myrick's committee (Energy and Commerce) is marking up policy issues for the House of Representatives' health care reform bill.


- Doug Miller


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Setting a standard for basic health care is not rationing! Another basic attempt to symanticly reduce practical health care for all to symantics.

Anonymous said...

Huh? I majored in English, but I can't seem to make sense of that sentence.

Brendan M said...

Myrick is concerned that the "public option" will cause rationing of health care????

Sue - that's what the current health care system does already. Health care is "rationed" by the insurance company's willingness to pay for treatment - especially in cases where expensive treatment is needed

Anonymous said...

Brendan is exactly right!! Trying to get an expensive test is decided by a bunch of coats in a room that are not even experts in your field of medicine. My doctor prescribed a test and it took two months of fighting to get it approved.
As far as MD's liability insurance. It is next to impossible to sue a doctor. You can
get out-of-state doctors to find him negligent...but you also have to have a NC doctor. The in-state doctors circle the wagons and will not find negligence. I had one MD say that my doctor would never make the mistake again. Another said that there are A doctors and D- doctors and they can't know everything. Excuses for stupidity.

Anonymous said...

*I'd like to ask why it took a Democratic President to get Republican politicians to even think about healthcare?
*Doesn't the Representative realize healthcare is already rationed?
*A public option is the only way to provide competition that will bring down insurance prices?
*Why didn't she initiate a resolution to stop the insurance companies abusing customers during all the many years the GOP was in control?
This, "we have all the answers to the healthcare issue" nonsense the GOP is pandering is ridiculous when they've done nothing but block anything that benefited patients for years while the insurance execs walk away with the money.

Anonymous said...

Sue Myrick is correct. Thank God for her. It not doctor's or nurses salaries that are increasing the cost of health care. Rather it is the malpractice insurance premiums which contribute 40% of everyone's boll plus the cost of extra tests performed by doctors to head off further lawsuits contribute another 20%. None of this is mentioned or reduced in the socialized medicine bill. This is a total scam by Obama to take control of everyones lives