Jim Risch on Health Care Republican Jr Senator; previously Governor

ObamaCare is a regulatory quagmire

A: Yes. I fought against ObamaCare originally and I voted for and cosponsored every attempt to repeal it. This regulatory quagmire is not the solution for America's healthcare problems. We need more jobs and its small businesses that create those jobs. ObamaCare has discouraged small businesses from expanding. It has instead encouraged small business owners to cut hours, hire more part-time employees, increase the amount the employees contribute to healthcare, and in some instances, even quit providing healthcare coverage. When so many Americans are seeking stable sustainable employment, we do not need this law with thousands of pages of federal mandates and its chilling effect on job growth. I would replace ObamaCare with market-oriented reforms; a plan that gives individual Americans greater control over their healthcare and reduces the cost. The Patient CARE Act proposed by republican senators is a better alternative.

Private sector is best suited to manage health care

A: The private sector is best suited to manage health care access and cost.

Innovation and technology make health care high quality

A: It is absolutely critical to improving health care. It is the innovation and technology that has made health care in America some of the highest quality in the world. As Governor, I invested in this area & created a task force to deliver more well educated, high tech nurses to the medical profession. We broke ground on two new high tech nursing colleges and greatly expanded the state's financial commitment to the effort.

Religious exemption from ObamaCare individual mandate.

Congressional Summary: To provide an additional religious exemption from the individual health coverage mandate. This Act may be cited as the `Equitable Access to Care and Health Act` or the `EACH Act`. The `Religious Conscience Exemption` exempts individuals who are members of a recognized religious sect which relies solely on a religious method of healing, and for whom the acceptance of medical health services would be inconsistent with their religious beliefs.

Supporters reasons for voting YEA: (TheHill.com weblog, April 29, 2013): `We believe the EACH Act balances a respect for religious diversity against the need to prevent fraud and abuse,` wrote Reps. Aaron Schock (R-IL) and William Keating (D-MA). `It is imperative we expand the religious conscience exemption now as the Administration is verifying the various exemptions to the individual mandate,` they wrote. Religious exemption from ObamaCare has come up before, including contraception. The EACH Act, however, deals only with exemptions from the insurance mandate.

Opponents reasons for voting NAY: (CHILD, Inc. `Children`s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty`, Dec. 2014): The Christian Science church is pushing hard to get another religious exemption through Congress. The EACH Act exempts everyone with `sincerely held religious beliefs` from the mandate to buy health insurance. We are particularly concerned about uninsured children: hundreds of American children have died because of their family`s religious objections to medical care. The EACH Act increases the risk to children in faith-healing sects and the cost to the state if the children do get medical care. Some complain that their church members should not have to pay for health care that they won`t use. But insurance works on the assumption that many in the pool of policyholders will not draw from it. Most people with fire insurance don`t have their homes burn, for example.

Establishment of Office of Health Care Fraud Prevention.

CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY:
• There is hereby established, in the Department of H, the Office of the Deputy Secretary for Health Care Fraud Prevention.
• The Office shall provide contracts for the design, development, and operation of a predictive model antifraud system, based on the risk level assigned to claims activity, and develop a comprehensive antifraud database for health care activities carried out or managed by Federal health agencies.
• The Office shall promulgate and enforce regulations relating to the reporting of data claims to the health care antifraud system.

SPONSOR`S INTRODUCTORY REMARKS:

Sen. LeMIEUX. The current proposal for health care is a $1 trillion proposal. If we spent as much time caring about the money we are spending now, as opposed to the money some in this Chamber want to spend, I suspect we could find plenty of money to either return to the people or to find money for these new programs.

Today, I wish to talk about just such an idea, an idea to recover some of the waste, fraud, and abuse that is currently happening in our current provision of health care--in Medicare and Medicaid. Estimates are that some $60 billion to a staggering $226 billion a year to waste, fraud, and abuse.

This health care proposal that we are discussing in the Senate is $1 trillion over 10 years. That is about $100 billion a year. We may be wasting $226 billion a year. If we captured just half of that, we might be able to pay for this program.

Why can`t we do the same thing the credit card companies are doing for health care? Why can`t we use a predictive modeling system that says a health care claim is not going to be paid when a red flag comes up? Right now we are on a pay-and-chase system. If we put this predictive modeling system in, it stops the fraud before it happens. The credit card industry benchmark is 0.1% while fraud losses in the health care business run from 3% to 14%.