I had the opportunity two weeks ago to attend a panel discussion on health insurance reform. Representative Mike Pence was one of the panelists. His opening comments intrigued me, as they included a number of interesting assertions.
First, Pence said unequivocally that the current system was flawed and not working for consumers. Second, he said that he believed rising health insurance costs constitute a "crisis" and offered an impossible-to-substantiate claim that in 2005 he had urged President Bush to take on health insurance rather than Social Security. Finally, Pence claimed that this was an issue he had been working very hard on ever since he was elected 9 years ago.
All of that was news to me. I went home from the panel and began researching Pence's legislative history on health insurance reform. I found that he had voted to cap medical malpractice damages (2003-2004 session) and had twice introduced bills that would create small business associations that could purchase insurance across state lines (2003-2004 session, and 2005-2006 session). Neither of the small business association bills even made it out of committee, and at both times you had a Republican-controlled Congress (which means that not even the Republicans think these were good bills). Of course, this may be because there are significant problems with this type of "plan" for making health insurance more affordable.
I e-mailed Mr. Pence's office to ask what else he had done to address this crisis and why he thought his own party had failed to do anything meaningful to solve the problem of skyrocketing health care and insurance costs when they were in power. That was about three weeks ago. I am yet to hear back from them, even though they promise a response in "ten business days." I'll let you know when we're finally able to get in touch.
P.S. For those of you who are curious about what your legislator(s) do while they are in Congress, this website can be very helpful.
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