Exclusive Interview With Congressman and M.D. Tom Price of Georgia’s 6th District

Georgia's 6th district Republican Congressman, Dr. Tom Price, sits in his Washington D.C. Canon building office with the nearly 4000 pages of health reform legislation at his side. Price and every Republican member of the House of Representatives voted against the legislation.

WASHINGTON D.C. — Ten hours after historic health care reform legislation passed in the House of Representatives, I sat down with Republican Congressman Dr. Tom Price in his fourth floor office across the street from the U.S. Capitol. The topic of our conversation this morning was health care reform and the bill now awaiting President Barack Obama’s signature. The reconciliation bill and changes must first be passed by the Senate.

Question 1 – Why has this health care issue become so divisive and partisan and do you think the partisanship helped the American people?

Price:  Oh goodness, no. It’s divisive because the two main groups, the left believes the government can make better decisions for individual Americans. We believe patients and families and doctors should be making medical decisions. It’s as fundamental as that. When you begin to march through these pieces of legislation, the foundation which they begin with is that the government ought to be making these decisions. And because health care decisions are made by every single American and because they are so very personal, it becomes very divisive very quickly. It’s partisan because of the leadership. Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi has demanded partisanship. She has told her members that if they speak or work with Republicans on this they’ll be shut out of the room. That’s a decision made from the leadership on the other side.

Question 2 – As a doctor, do you believe access to affordable and high quality health care is a right or a privilege for citizens and why?

Price: I know and believe that we are a compassionate nation and that we care for all citizens. There is a way to construct a system that we have attempted to get to the fore which puts patients and families in charge of health care regardless of one’s economic status. That’s what I believe, we believe, to be ideal. When you begin to march down having the government controlling everyone’s health care , that’s where you get off the road of having care that is responsive to individual  and makes it so that it’s moving in the direction that people want it to move, not the government wants it to move, but the people want it to move.

Question 3 – Just before I came over here I saw on TV former Republican Senator Dr. Bill Frist on CNN. He said the bill that passed last night was a good first step but still didn’t do enough to address the rising costs issue. My question is, do you agree with him, and if you do or you don’t, what still needs to be done that this bill doesn’t accomplish to rein in costs?

Price: Well it’s hardly a step. It’s a leap off a cliff. This is a move into a major intervention of the federal government into every aspect and principle of health care that Americans hold dear in the wrong direction.  To hear the rest of Price’s answer where he discusses the four main cost drivers in health care and how the passed legislation is inadequate, click here.

Question 4 – So what’s next? The health care bill passed last night, from a Republican standpoint, from your standpoint, what’s next? What are you going to do?

Price: The question is from an American standpoint. The American people oppose this bill, by two, three sometimes four to one depending on how the question is asked. They now no longer believe their government is listening to them. They no longer believe that their representatives are representing them. They believe their representatives are now, by and large, representing the leadership and a party, and they are mad as they can be. And they’re angry. And I appreciate that anger and I share that anger. So what’s next is to attempt to move this in a positive direction as rapidly as possible through a variety of efforts.

One, there are many aspects of this bill we believe to be unconstitutional and there are folks who will be trying that constitutionality in the courts. The states, nearly 40 states now, said they believe they ought to be able to have their citizens have the right to not be held to comply with the federal dictates from this piece of legislation. We will be moving toward a repeal and reform-it-now process, which is identifying the things in this bill that are oppressive and decrease the quality of care to the American people, and repeal those and reform them and replace them with appropriate solutions that we put on the table in the past. And then at the end of the day, we are here today because of the election in November of 08. Elections have consequences. There is an election in November 2010 and we’ll be working as hard as we can with like-minded citizens and patriots across this land who believe that individuals, patients, families and physicians ought to be able to make medical decisions and not the government.

Question 5 – On your Web site, it says one of your priorities is providing “patient-centered” health care. The bill passed last night estimates 30 million people currently not insured will now be insured. My question is, Isn’t adding 30 million uninsured potential patients to the insurance roles a patient-centered health care bill?

Price: It depends on what you’re giving them. If you’re giving them a card that says you have the right to get in line and wait, that’s not patient-centered. If you’re giving them a plan that is a substandard plan because of rationing of care and doesn’t allow you to get the care that you want to receive for you and your family, that’s not patient-centered.  If you’re dictating to the patients what doctors they’re able to see and what procedures and tests they’re able to have, that’s not patient-centered. So it depends what you’re giving them. The fact of the matter is, these bills, the bills passed yesterday, will not improve quality in this nation, they will decrease quality. They won’t decrease costs of health care in this nation, they will increase costs. They will not increase access in this nation, they will decease access in this nation. They will not increase responsiveness of this system; they will decrease the responsiveness of this system. It will destroy innovation that has given us the greatest health care system in the world and it will remove choices for the American people. So none of the principles that we hold dear as it relates to health care are improved by what is in these bills.

Question 6 – I read awhile back a CBO (Congressional Budget Office) report that said the Republican plan offered would add 3 million uninsured to the insurance roles whereas the democratic plan passed adds around 30 million. With estimates now of 50 million people being uninsured, why would the Republican plan stick so close to a status quo that currently doesn’t give health care insurance to millions of Americans?

Price: A couple of points. One is the Republican plan to which people refer was because of the rules of the House the only alternative that was able to be offered by the tyrannical nature of the speaker in her effort to decrease the ability of Republicans to get their issues to the floor, the only alternative that was able to be offered during the first health care debate. Yesterday, there was no alternative that was able to be offered, none. And the bill that I have supported, strongly, is H.R. 3400, which is a comprehensive piece of health care reform legislation that I believe would get a vast majority, if not all of the American people, covered with health care coverage that they selected and that they want for themselves and their families and not what the government wants for them. So the notion that there is only one Republican plan out there is just flawed and it’s not accurate in reflecting the kinds of proposals that Republicans have put forward.

 Question 7 – I’m going to read something to you from the Health Political Action Committee online Web site, which was established in 2001 to promote health care reform in the United States and advocate universal health care for all Americans. I’ll follow the statement up with a question.

 “It is unconscionable that the United States is one of the wealthiest and most advanced countries in the world yet it is the only industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care as a right of citizenship. The desire for universal health care is not the promotion of socialized medicine, but the belief that every American should have access to affordable, high-quality medical care.”

My question is, is universal health care a realistic dream for Americans to have and why or why not?

Price: Well sure it is, yeah, and our bill gets us to universal coverage, but it gets us to universal coverage that the people want for themselves and their families and not what the government wants for them. The premise of that question is that the only way to get to universal coverage is if the government GIVES you health care, and when the government GIVES you health care, what it GIVES you is out of your control, so you no longer control the most personal decisions of your life. That’s unacceptable.    

It was a rainy and gloomy day in Washington D.C. Monday. The same could also be said for Republicans, because not one supported health care reform legislation that passed the House of Represenatives late Sunday night. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law Tuesday.

Question 8 – A 2000 World Health Organization ranking of the countries with the best health care said France was number one and the US was number 37.  My question is, what’s wrong with a public option insurance system like they have in France where the government provides service but it also competes against private insurers?

Price: Well, the question really is, what is the World Health Organization use to rank nations? The fact of the matter is if you look at disease specific criteria, the United States has the greatest health system in the world. If you have a heart attack today, the likelihood of you surviving that heart attack is better where you’re seated than anywhere else in the world. If you’re diagnosed with cancer tomorrow or someone in your family is diagnosed with cancer, the likelihood of you or someone in your family surviving that cancer is greater here in this nation than anywhere in the world. If you have an awful traumatic injury somewhere in a metropolitan area in this nation, your likelihood of surviving and being able to lead a productive life is greater there than anywhere else in this world. So what the World Health Organization uses to determine its ranking oftentimes bears no resemblance to specific disease criteria as it relates to outcomes in real people with real problems on the street. One of things that the World Health Organization uses as one of their items that they put into that equation is whether or not you’re insured. Well, in this nation, oftentimes whether or not you are insured doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you get treatment. In fact, there are people everyday who are treated by the generosity and altruism of the physicians providing care across this land who have no insurance whatsoever. The World Health Organization doesn’t count that at all. So when individuals who are of means in France get really sick, where do they go? They go to the United States.

Question 9 – My wife is a current emergency room nurse at Emory University Hospital and prior to that worked in the ER at a Chicago inner-city Level 1 trauma center. She said she sees people all the time that don’t have insurance who come into the ER for treatment because they have nowhere else to go. (Price interjects, “That’s right.”) How can that problem be fixed? How can we get to a point where we practice more preventative medicine as opposed to reactionary medicine?

Price: We make it so that those individuals actually are able to purchase the health coverage that they want, and that’s what H.R. 3400 does. It makes it so that regardless of your economic station in life, you will have, we will make certain as a society because we are generous and believe it is appropriate, we will give you the financial wherewithal to be able to purchase the health coverage that you want for you and your family, not what the government wants for you. It is so incredibly important that we make certain that the system that we have respects individuals. The bills that were passed yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives do not respect individuals. They put their trust in government and not people.

Question 10 – What’s your thought on how the media has portrayed these bills to the American public? (Price says, “Some has been good, some has been bad.”) Has it been accurate? (Price says, “By and large not.”) To hear the rest of Price’s answer and his comments on the more than 4000 pages of legislation passed yesterday and what universal health care has done to the state of Massachusetts, click here.

Question 11 –   Last question, this bill still leaves millions of Americans without access to quality healthcare. What’s your thought on a bill that would simply extend the health care packages currently enjoyed by Federal employees to the entire U.S. population given they are legal citizens?

Price: It’s interesting that you ask that question because that’s part of the construct and model that we used for H.R. 3400. The federal employee health benefits program is a wonderful program and rests on the principle and belief that individuals ought to be able to make decisions about their own medical care so that I and every other federal employee every single year get to select the insurance that we want for ourselves and our family for that next year because situations change. That’s the model upon which we built H.R. 3400, which would give the American people the privilege and the right and the opportunity to every single year be able to select the coverage that they want for themselves and their family and not what the government wants for them. That’s the solution, that’s a big part of the solution.  

Jamie Ward: So you’ll keep fighting for (H.R.) 3400? 

Price: Absolutely! The battle of ideas never ends and the price of liberty is eternal vigilance…And we’ll be eternally vigilant.

 

Related posts:

1. Fulton County Residents Encouraged To Donate Cash To Help Haiti Earthquake Victims
2. Cory Ruth Declares Candidacy For Congress