Johnny Isakson, United States Senator

Johnny Isakson's Position Statement on Health Care

As a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, I am committed to enhancing our nation’s health care by addressing the issues of cost, quality, coverage and accessibility.

There are currently 44 million uninsured individuals in America and 9 million uninsured children. It is critical that Congress work to provide access to affordable health care insurance for all Americans.

Health Care Reform

***Please click here to view the Senate health care bill in its entirety.***

As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee as well as a former small business owner, I am aware of the problems our nation faces regarding health care and am sensitive to the struggles the average, hard-working American faces when trying to gain access to adequate and affordable health care. I have always believed in looking for solutions for ways to provide access to affordable health care to individuals who lack access to health insurance through an employer.

However, I voted against the deeply flawed, unpopular health care bill passed by the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives and signed by President Obama on March 30, 2010.

The thousands of Georgians I have heard from on this issue are very leery of being pushed into a government-run system that will have to be paid for with higher taxes. I voted against this bill because I could not be a part of driving Americans to a government-run health care system that we can’t afford.

I am working with my Republican colleagues in the Senate to repeal and replace this health care bill, which will raise taxes, raise premiums, cut benefits for seniors and place a massive unfunded mandates on the states. In addition, I support the efforts of the state attorneys general who are suing the federal government over the constitutionality of the new federal mandate requiring all individuals to carry insurance policies.

The tax increases in this bill will be massive, immediate and couldn’t come at a worse time for families and small businesses. As soon as the bill was passed, at least 14 companies – including AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, Caterpillar and Lockheed Martin – announced they would have to take millions of dollars in charges against their 2010 first-quarter earnings because the health care bill eliminates the tax-free subsidies they have been receiving as an incentive to provide prescription drug benefits to their retirees. This will have a devastating impact on small businesses and jobs.

I believe there could be some common ground between Republicans and Democrats in terms of insurance portability and not being rejected for pre-existing conditions or cancelled if you have a disease. However, I firmly believe the best way to reach these goals is through choice and competition in the private sector.

I believe the key to health care reform is stimulating competition in a market-based system that will encourage private health insurers and managed care providers to compete for business and make health insurance more affordable for consumers. I also believe Congress should look carefully into proposals that will increase coverage of preventative and wellness care, which will help control the cost of managing chronic diseases and drive down the cost of treating largely preventable conditions.

I am a co-sponsor of S.1099, Patients’ Choice Act of 2009, which seeks to strengthen the relationship between the patient and the doctor by using choice and competition, rather than rationing and restrictions, to contain costs and ensure affordable health care for all Americans.

Patients' Choice Act

I am proud to co-sponsor S.1099, Patients' Choice Act of 2009, which seeks to strengthen the relationship between the patient and the doctor and ensure universal, affordable health care for all Americans by:

Preventing disease and promoting healthier lifestyles
Creating affordable and accessible health insurance options
Equalizing the tax treatment of health care, empowering all Americans with real access to coverage
Modernizing the Medicaid benefit and protecting Medicare beneficiary choice
Ensuring compensation for injured patients
Establishing transparency in health care price and quality

During consideration of overall health care reform legislation, the Patients' Choice Act was offered as a full substitute amendment to the Democrats’ proposal. However, it was defeated in a 14 to 9 vote.

The Patients' Choice Act would restore fairness in the tax code and give every American, regardless of employment status, the ability to purchase health insurance by:

Decoupling health insurance from an individual's job by treating the employer-subsidized portion of the benefit as taxable income and replacing it with an advanceable and refundable tax credit of $2,300 per individual or $5,700 per family;
Improving the operation of Health Savings Accounts [HSAs] by allowing health insurance premiums to be paid with HSAs without a tax penalty;
Allowing preventative services to be covered by High Deductible Health Plans; and
Increasing the amount of money an HSA owner may annually contribute to their account.

The Patients' Choice Act also would create affordable and accessible health insurance options through state or regional health insurance exchanges that offer everyone risk-adjusted private options. State or regional exchanges would not be allowed to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions and participating plans would have to meet the definition of coverage employed in Federal Employee Health Benefit Plans.

The Patients' Choice Act would establish transparency in health care pricing and quality through the creation of a public-private Healthcare Services Commission that would publish and enforce quality and price information.

The Patients' Choice Act would alleviate state budget concerns and the stigma of Medicaid by allowing those who chose to enroll switch into higher quality private plans through direct assistance.

The Patients' Choice Act also encourages increased coordination of federal and state prevention efforts to reduce rates of chronic disease such as heart disease and diabetes.

Medicare Reimbursements for Physicians

On June 18, 2010, the Senate passed legislation by unanimous consent to prevent a cut in the Medicare reimbursement fees for physicians. However, it is unsure if the House will act on the legislation. A previous short-term law to prevent the cut (PL 111-157) expired June 1. As a result, physicians are currently experiencing a 21 percent cut in their Medicare reimbursements.

I support repealing the Sustainable Growth Rate, also known as the SGR, which is the flawed payment schedule used to determine Medicare reimbursement fees for physicians. Congress has voted to delay the reduction of physician fees—known informally as the "doc fix"—in each calendar year since 2003.

More and more this issue is being used to manipulate policy makers into voting for deals that not only include riders that are detrimental to patient care, but they are purely and simply a bad deal for physicians.

I will continue to try to ensure that these Medicare reimbursement cuts do not go into effect. In fact, rather than addressing payment rates every year, I believe the ideal solution would be a permanent payment fix—not a temporary payment freeze—so that we can avoid these types of partisan games every year and doctors can be appropriately compensated and seniors continue to have access to care.

In addition, I will always support giving our senior citizens better choices and better access to the health care they need.

The health reform bill passed in 2010 highlights how more than ever we the need to act on the SGR repeal to ensure that Medicare beneficiaries have access to their doctors. The health reform bill will cut half a trillion dollars from the Medicare program over the next 10 years. These cuts will jeopardize beneficiary access to Medicare and ultimately the solvency of the program. The flawed SGR will only serve to exacerbate these issues.

Stem Cell Research

Stem cell research is one of the most important issues we will deal with and I have tried to approach the debate in as careful a manner as possible. I understand both the potential and promise that such research holds as well as its moral implications. I have consulted preeminent scholars and researchers around the country who are on the verge of breakthroughs in several areas and who believe that embryonic stem cell research could hold the key to their success. In every meeting or conversation I’ve had on this issue, I also have raised the moral implications that concern us all. Certain methods of obtaining embryonic stem cells could destroy a potential life in the process, and that is unacceptable. There are also concerns that this research could lead to human cloning or fetal farming, both of which I adamantly oppose.

In March 2007, I introduced S.30, the Hope Offered through Principled and Ethical Stem Cell Research (HOPE) Act, with Senator Norm Coleman, R-Minn. The HOPE Act would have allowed science to move forward in an ethical and moral way by permitting federal funding of scientific research that does not harm embryos, such as deriving cells from amniotic fluid and placentas, and from embryos that have died naturally.

I worked to draft a solution that would have allowed this important research to move forward without compromising moral standards. My proposal was based on research that is being conducted at the University of Georgia in which embryonic stem cell lines are created from the natural byproducts of in-vitro fertilization. This byproduct material includes only those embryos that could never become a fetus. This was a good compromise because we would have received the benefit of embryonic stem cells without destroying a potential life.

On April 11, 2007, the U.S. Senate approved the HOPE Act by a vote of 70 to 28. I was extremely pleased that an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of my Senate colleagues voted in support of the HOPE Act. The vote was an affirmation of the need to expand embryonic stem cell research. It was also an affirmation that there is a way to expand this important research while still respecting the ethical and moral concerns that exist.

Medicare

I understand the frustration seniors have with the price of prescription drugs, and I am a strong supporter of access to affordable healthcare coverage. Congress created Medicare Part D as an option for seniors to help pay for prescription drugs. The Medicare prescription drug plan is the first federally funded insurance program for prescription drugs. Many seniors have signed up for the coverage and have saved money through these plans.

Under Medicare Part D, public hospitals, private providers, insurance companies and pharmacies all negotiate their drug prices with drug manufacturers. With so many providers negotiating with drug companies, the result is maximum competition and better prices. Open market negotiations cause the companies wagering for Part D plan coverage to provide the best possible price. Through this competition, the private sector has provided drug coverage for amounts under $5,100 a year.

The program has recently seen great success. Through competition, providers are competing for the lowest price and premiums are down 30 percent since the bill went into effect. Thanks to the Medicare Modernization Act, seniors are able to access a prescription drug plan that provides the most choice at the best possible price.

The health reform bill passed in 2010 calls for the so-called ‘doughnut hole’ to be phased out incrementally in the coming years and completely closed by 2020. The doughnut hole is a gap in coverage that occurs when the beneficiary spends more than $2,250 and must pay 100 percent of drug costs until they reach $5,100. Once they reach that threshold, they are only responsible for 5 percent of their drug costs and Medicare will pay for the rest. An estimated 92 percent of Medicare beneficiaries will never enter the Medicare drug benefits coverage gap and every beneficiary enrolled in a drug plan is protected against catastrophic expenditures. While I applaud measures to continue to make prescription drug more available to more seniors, I am concerned about the impact that the health reform bill will have on seniors on Medicare, as well as the long-term solvency of the program. The health reform bill will cut half a trillion dollars from Medicare over the next 10 years, a system that is already significantly underfunded and faces shortfalls across the spectrum of care it provides. These cuts will jeopardize beneficiary access to Medicare programs, including Part D, and ultimately the solvency of the program.

I am sympathetic to those who are facing this financial burden, and I am working with my colleagues to see that every senior has access to affordable health care. Some options to help with these costs are listed on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services webpage at www.cms.hhs.gov.

Medicare Fraud

Medicare fraud takes advantage of every tax-paying citizen here in the United States by defrauding our health care system of hundreds of millions of dollars. In recent years, Medicare fraud schemes have grown bolder and more elaborate, making it more difficult to catch those responsible.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is taking steps to eliminate this type of fraud by joining forces with the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate fraudulent Medicare suppliers. The work of the multi-agency team of federal, state and local investigators is generating results. Nearly $258 million dollars has been returned to the Medicare system since these agencies began their investigations.

In another effort to eliminate fraud, the agency has also announced several demonstration projects focused on preventing deceptive companies from operating in south Florida, southern California and the Houston area, some of the largest areas of Medicare fraud.

I consider this a critical issue and will work to find solutions to help curtail Medicare fraud and abuse.

Drug Reimportation

I am concerned with the high price of prescription drugs but I disagree that importing drugs from other countries is the answer. I will always support policies that protect consumers by requiring all prescription drugs to be approved for safety measures, regardless of its country of origin. I believe a ban on importation is appropriate unless the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services can ensure the quality and safety of imported drugs. As the world leader in healthcare innovation, the United States is looked to for standards of safety. The Food and Drug Administration has a duty to preserve our standards by providing that all drugs purchased and brought into the United States are safe.

Health Insurance for Small Business

I know firsthand how difficult it is for small businesses to provide health insurance to their employees because I faced the same challenge when I ran a small business, Northside Realty in Atlanta, for more than 20 years. Today, 44 million Americans lack health insurance, and 62 percent of those uninsured are either employed by a small business or dependent on someone who is.

I support legislation that would allow small businesses to pool together, nationally, to create Association Health Plans and either purchase their health insurance from a provider, or self insure in the same way that large employers and unions currently do. This would give small businesses the same market-based advantages and competitive leverage that large employers and unions enjoy when providing employees health insurance. It would also open the doors to affordable health insurance to millions who have to this day gone without, as well as helped to stem the tide of rising health care costs.