The Republican Study Committee is calling out the Democrats' Build Back Better attempt to have government take over the U.S. healthcare system in their socialist, "dystopic" vision.
"The Democrats' socialist spending spree, which they call the 'Build Back Better Act,' is more than just an irresponsible attack on the American economy — it's a direct assault on the very health and well-being of the American people," the RSC, led by Chairman Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., wrote in a memo to conservatives Tuesday.
"The bill expands the government's role in every aspect of the American healthcare system and is designed to insert the federal government into as many personal healthcare decisions as possible."
The RSC is a conservative caucus in the House and blasts the Biden's near $2 trillion budget reconciliation package for threatening affordable healthcare and healthcare access.
"Democrats have always sought to make as many people dependent on the federal government for healthcare as possible, while eliminating every other option that could drive down prices in the competitive marketplace," the memo continued. "By wrestling control away from doctors and patients, the Democrats' dystopic healthcare vision puts the onus on corporate and government bureaucrats who care more about the bottom line than they do about the health of our constituents.
"The Democrats three-pronged plan to wreck Americans' healthcare is simple: wreck healthcare choices, wreck Medicare, and wreck innovative cures that will save lives."
The memo laid out the three-pronged attack.
- Wrecking healthcare choices:
- 2 million will lose their employer healthcare with expanded Obamacare payments, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
- Those making as much as $500,000 would get the expanded subsidies from the American Rescue Plan Act, which would become permanent.
- A 2025 subsidy expiration is a "budgetary gimmick" to "hide its true cost to taxpayers."
- Bill would withhold funding from hospitals that have not expanded Medicaid: "Effectively, the bill would punish states that have sought better options than Medicaid for their poorest residents and shift coverage for many Americans from private insurance plans to lower quality Medicaid coverage."
- Wrecking Medicare:
- Spends nearly $40 billion to expand traditional Medicare to cover hearing benefits even though 93% of Medicare Advantage (MA) plans already cover them.
- Medicare expansion comes as the program approaches a fiscal crisis, putting its long-term viability for future beneficiaries in doubt.
- "Democrats know the success of MA poses a threat to their vision of government-run healthcare, and are willing to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to make sure Americans on Medicare have fewer choices."
- Wrecking cures:
- "Government mandated price-controls on selected prescription drugs by setting a ceiling of 40-75% of the average list price and, importantly, no floor on what rate the government can set."
- Hits manufacturers with up to a 95% excise tax if they do not accept the mandated price in the "negotiation."
- "Price controls kill innovation, and these policies will prevent up to 100 new cures from being brought to the American people. Those are real lives that won't be saved."
- They will kill competition: "Setting arbitrarily low rates on new drugs, generic competition for brand named drugs will be disincentivized."
It is all a further move to socialized medicine the RSC concluded.
"Bottom line: The healthcare policies in reconciliation are another step in the left's long march to socialism," the memo read. "They want more bureaucrats standing in the way of American patients and doctors because they truly believe they know what's better for you than you do.
"But in putting their radical ideology ahead of finding common-sense solutions, they're costing lives. They're wrecking competition, they're wrecking Medicare, and they're costing American lives."