The Real Deal on Health Care Repeal

I dropped a hammer on Obamacare last week -- literally. I had the honor of presiding over the health care repeal vote in the House of Representatives, and I banged the gavel to report the bipartisan result of the vote: 244-185.

That was the easy part. Forcing action in the Senate and making the White House listen to reason are more difficult tasks.

But it is no less important that we finish the job. Three branches of government have agreed that the Obama health care law is a tax, and it is up to the Congress to repeal the tax.

In fact, the health care law includes 21 taxes, including the tax penalty for the individual mandate. And $525 billion in new taxes will fall at the feet of families and small businesses. The Americans who provide those jobs in our communities and those who rely on those jobs are hit hardest. The Congressional Budget Office says 800,000 American jobs will evaporate into thin air under Obamacare.

The law also boasts a $500 billion cut to Medicare, $1.76 trillion in new debt on the American people, and a board of unelected bureaucrats who are given historic new powers over the health care decisions of private citizens and their doctors.

Need more evidence this bill is a bad deal? An estimated 20 million will actually lose their health insurance, 30 percent of employers say they will "definitely" drop health insurance coverage in 2014, and two-thirds of health care providers are considering stopping their participation in ANY government benefit program.

Repealing the bill is the only way to assure these taxes never have such a destructive effect on our economy.

Yet some are opposed to repeal, saying we must keep it all or return to an impossible system of health care. My response to those people is that they have ignored market reforms in favor of a big government solution. More expense, more bureaucrats and more invasion into our personal decisions and our private lives. This law is really not health care reform, after all, it is a massive tax increase and a huge expansion of government.

In truth, the law does more to increase the costs of health care in America (in part by requiring more taxes to administer the system from the government rather than from the private sector) than to create savings for people who rely on our doctors, treatments and medicines for their good health.

Ultimately, we must find market-based solutions to these problems of access and cost. But we cannot do anything good for the cost and quality of health care in America by moving the administration of the system to the government or, more specifically, to the IRS.

The repeal vote which passed the House is not meaningless, but it cannot win passage in the Senate or the signature of the President who wrote the law it would kill. States, communities, health care providers, families and Americans from all walks of life will have to continue to press the case that Obamacare is not worth its weight in taxes. We must have new leadership to start working for a better solution.