First, I strongly believe we do need health care reform. The question arises, is health care a right?

A right cannot put a requirement upon another person. Dr. Walter E. Williams put it this way:

“True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another. In other words, my rights to speech or travel impose no obligations on another except those of non-interference. If we apply ideas behind rights to health care to my rights to speech or travel, my free speech rights would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with an auditorium, television studio or radio station. My right to travel freely would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with airfare and hotel accommodations.

For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, or any other good or service, whether a person can afford it or not, it must diminish someone else's rights, namely their rights to their earnings. The reason is that Congress has no resources of its very own. Moreover, there is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy giving them those resources. The fact that government has no resources of its very own forces one to recognize that in order for government to give one American citizen a dollar, it must first, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.”

Real reform of health care does not require government to make it a right. Real reform must address the following issues:

Increase Insurance Competitiveness – We need to have competition between insurance companies across state lines. By limiting competition, the government is actually protecting insurance companies and not the patient. Through competition, the cost of health care insurance will decrease and the choice of coverage will increase.

Remove State Mandates – State mandates require us or our employers to purchase insurance policies that cover elective procedures that most Americans don’t need. We should be able to choose the coverage we want, not what some politician thinks we need.

Encourage Health Savings Accounts – By allowing more people to use tax-free dollars for regular doctor visits, we can decrease the cost of many routine services. The money that is left in the account stays with the patient and upon their death becomes part of their estate to be passed on to their heirs.

Tort Reform – We need tort reform to lower the cost of medical malpractice insurance and to stop doctors from ordering unnecessary tests to protect themselves from lawsuits.

Policy Cancellation – People should not have their insurance policies canceled because they need medical treatment. The only just cause for cancellation is when the person commits fraud or withholds information about a health condition.

By enacting these measures, we can have real health care cost reform and not a government take-over of the best system in the world. My campaign stance is to repeal the existing so-called health care reform and replace it with a bill that meets the above requirements.

My Personal Story

In the fall of 2008, I started experiencing tightness in my chest while playing basketball. Being only 40 at the time, I just assumed that I was out of shape because I hadn’t played in several months.

When the tightness continued, I decided I needed to see my doctor. He did a check-up with an EKG and could not find anything abnormal. After some talk, he recommended having a stress test. I had the stress test done and found some abnormalities. My doctor put me on 81mg aspirin and scheduled me to meet with a cardiologist.

The cardiologist looked over my stress test results and did an examination. I had none of the standard flags for heart disease – I was only about 10 pounds overweight, and I don’t smoke or drink. The cardiologist suggested a more detailed stress test. The test indicated that there was a problem with the blood flow around my heart.

The next step was to have a heart catheterization to see the extent of the blockage. The procedure revealed that I had a complete blockage of the artery on the left side of my heart. With that realization, the doctors moved quickly to have an angioplasty and a stint inserted. Unfortunately, the blockage was too severe and the doctor was unsuccessful in placing the stint.

Our next hope would be open-heart surgery and a single bypass. The typical open-heart surgery requires the chest to be opened to allow the surgeon to create the bypass. This can require a long recovery time. However, the surgeon that my cardiologist choose had been using a new procedure that uses robotics to do the bypass through a small incision.

The bypass procedure was successful, and I spent about 5 days in the hospital and was back at work part-time by 3 weeks, whereas the typical recovery time is 7 days in the hospital and 4 to 6 weeks before returning to work.

I tell you this story to point out the ingenuity of our doctors and surgeons and how great our health care system is. But it is great because we have doctors that are rewarded for great care and health innovation. If the government controls our health care, where will the incentive come to be better? Capitalism works because it rewards the effort and success of a person. Socialism fails because there is no incentive to be better. I would rather have the best doctors that I choose. Just ask Premier Danny Williams from Canada, who went to Miami for heart surgery (Source http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/972608).