The Private Healthcare Market Place

General Principles

Americans will benefit from having a vigorous private market place for healthcare and healthcare insurance that is based upon free market principles and individual rights. This notion is entirely consistent with American history and tradition and is in conformity with the Constitution of the United States of America. This will promote innovation, maximize quality and choice, and minimize cost for consumers.

An appropriate role of the federal government, with certain limitations, is to appropriately regulate healthcare to the extent that it represents interstate commerce (see the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8)) in order to protect the public. However, this should not be construed to mean that government should force individuals or other private entities to participate in the private healthcare market place nor should it be construed to mean that government should completely take over healthcare, displacing the private market place altogether. Such actions on the part of the federal government would represent an unconstitutional expansion of federal power that would threaten our constitutionally guaranteed individual rights as well as the rights of the states (see the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution).

Medicaid

Objective

My goal as a practicing physician is to provide care to those in need, and that includes the poor. For that reason, Medicaid patients have always been a relatively high percentage of my patient population. In fact, the vast majority of my patients are enrolled in Medicaid (the poor), Medicare (seniors and the permanently disabled), or are uninsured. In order to be able to accept the extremely low reimbursement rates associated with my patient population, I lowered the overhead expense of my solo practice by closing my office. In lieu of an office, I now make house calls. As a primary care provider, I realize that Medicaid is not adequately providing for the healthcare needs of poor patients, and I am acutely aware of the relatively limited number of physicians and dentists who will see Medicaid patients.

My goal in the Senate will be to provide bipartisan leadership to overhaul and strengthen Medicaid. This will be part of a broader effort to make sure that the poor among us have access to the best possible care.