The president and many Democrats are urging Congress to quickly pass their idea of health reform because they say it is key to economic recovery and better health. We fail to see how creating scores of new bureaucracies will revitalize anything except the governing class in Washington.

Here are just a few of the new entities and processes the House Democrats’ bill establishes: the Health Choices Administration, the Health Insurance Exchange, the Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund, the Government Health Plan, which undoubtedly will have an administrator plus hundreds of new government employees, the Bureau of Health Information, and the Health Benefits Advisory Committee. This is not even the complete list.

One attraction for many is that so much of this will be free — except that somebody has to pay for it. To get the money for health care, the bill places enormous new costs and burdens on employers and a surtax on the income earned by the “rich” — which includes thousands of small businesses that file as individuals.

We know the new employment tax in the bill will kill job creation at a time our country can least afford it. The economic model of the president’s chief economic adviser estimates that the health care proposal could cost the economy over 4.5 million jobs.

But it’s not just what’s in the bill that troubles us, it’s also what’s missing. The legislation before us does not reform the outdated and broken payment system the government uses to pay doctors who treat Medicare patients, ignores medical justice reform and fails to provide additional assistance to ensure the future physician workforce our country’s health care system will rely upon.

The bill does not seize this important opportunity to reform Medicaid for our neediest citizens. It seems to tip its hat to some fundamental problems and then adds 15 million new Americans to the rolls, essentially taking the problem from bad to unmanageable.

Nothing in this bill actually attempts to reduce the growth of health care spending, and in fact, the Congressional Budget Office has admitted that the bill will actually cost us more and dig us deeper into debt.

Why would we advocate spending more federal dollars for health care when the current system is deeply flawed and wastes billions a year? Need proof? An investigative report by a local TV station found one woman in North Texas who was responsible for collecting more than $1 million in fraudulent payments from Medicare. One woman — more than $1 million.

The solution to these problems, though, is not an expansion of the government side of the equation. We should not tear down the world’s best medical system. Instead, we should build on what works and fix the areas that don’t. We can help the thousand of Americans who want health care, but are excluded because of a pre-existing condition, get coverage. We can make it possible for a family in New Jersey to buy a health care plan from an insurance company across the border in Pennsylvania because its premium is more affordable.

With more than 50 years of combined legislative and medical experience, we have just a few ideas of what role government should play in improving the quality of health care in America, preserving the doctor-patient relationship, and helping the millions of Americans who don’t have coverage and want it, get it.

When you go to your doctor with a problem, you want that physician to take the time to correctly diagnose the problem and prescribe the best remedy. We should do the same with health care reform.

U.S. Reps. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, and Michael Burgess, R-Flower Mound, are members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton is the committee’s ranking Republican; Burgess was an obstetrician/gynecologist for 25 years before being elected to Congress. They may be reached through joebarton.house.gov or burgess.house.gov.


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