Top 10 Reasons to Vote FOR H.R. 1304
10. You like what OPEC has done for oil prices.
The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have broken up dozens of medical OPECs, which have used boycotts and coercion to win fee increases of up to 40%. H.R. 1304 would legalize such anticonsumer conduct, resulting in higher health care costs.9. You think too many low-income children have health insurance. CBO estimates that the higher fees collected by doctors will cost Medicaid and SCHIP more than $2.4 billion over 10 years. That same $2.4 billion, if spent directly on providing coverage to children under SCHIP, would extend health insurance coverage to 140,000 children every year over the same 10-year period.
8. You think Americans pay too little for health insurance. Higher doctor fees mean higher health insurance premiums.
7. You’d like to increase the number of uninsured Americans to a nice, round number like, say, 50 million. Higher health insurance premiums mean more uninsured.
6. You’d like to reduce prescription drug coverage among seniors. In a joint letter to the Speaker, Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Bill Thomas and ranking Democratic member Pete Stark wrote: "H.R. 1304 would likely result in increased out-of-pocket expenses and less prescription drug access for Medicare beneficiaries who now obtain care in Medicare+Choice."
5. You’d like to increase out-of-pocket health care costs. H.R. 1304 would enable doctor cartels to eliminate contractual provisions that prevent doctors from "balance billling" – charging their patients more for services than insurance will pay.
4. You think the best way to spend the surplus is on doctor fees. CBO estimates that H.R. 1304 would reduce the surplus by more than $6 billion, even if it sunsets after three years.
3. You think people's wages and fringe benefits are just too high and you'd like to do what you can to reduce them. In addition to raising health insurance premiums, CBO concluded that H.R. 1304 would reduce wages and non-health fringe benefits.
2. You think doctors should change their patients' medications for political reasons, and not for any medical indication.
The Federation of Physicians and Dentists is currently boycotting a major pharmaceutical company because it mistakenly believed that that the company was opposed to H.R. 1304. AMNews, an AMA publication, in reporting on the boycott wrote: "In a twist of irony, ethicists say some physicians campaigning for the Campbell bill did exactly what they accuse managed care of doing: They limited their patients’ choice of drugs."AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON TO VOTE FOR H.R. 1304:
You think the most pressing problem in our health care system is that doctors make too little money.