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Restoring Patient Control and Preserving Quality in Healthcare
Any honest agenda for improving healthcare
must start with repeal of the dishonestly named
Affordable Care Act of 2010: Obamacare. It weighs
like the dead hand of the past upon American
medicine. It imposed a Euro-style bureaucracy to
manage its unworkable, budget-busting, conflicting
provisions. It has driven up prices for all consumers.
Their insurance premiums have dramatically
increased while their deductibles have risen about
eight times faster than wages in the last ten years.
It drove up drug prices by levying a $27 billion
tax on manufacturers and importers and, through
mandated price cuts for drugs under Medicare and
Medicaid, forced pharmaceutical companies to
raise prices for everyone else. Its “silver plans,” the
most common option on the government insurance
exchanges, limit people’s access to their own doctor
through narrow networks and restrict drug coverage,
forcing many patients to pay for extremely costly
medicines for their chronic diseases.
We agree with the four dissenting judges of the
Supreme Court: “In our view, the entire Act before
us is invalid in its entirety.” It must be removed
and replaced with an approach based on genuine
competition, patient choice, excellent care, wellness,
and timely access to treatment. To that end, a
Republican president, on the first day in office,
will use legitimate waiver authority under the law
to halt its advance and then, with the unanimous
support of Congressional Republicans, will sign its
repeal. The Supreme Court upheld Obamacare
based on Congress’ power to tax. It is time to repeal Obamacare and give America a much-needed tax
cut.
In its place we must combine what worked
best in the past with changes needed for the future.
We must recover the traditional patient-physician
relationship based on mutual trust, informed
consent, and confidentiality. To simplify the system
for both patients and providers, we will reduce
mandates and enable insurers and providers of
care to increase healthcare options and contain
costs. Our goal is to ensure that all Americans
have improved access to affordable, high-quality
healthcare, including those struggling with mental
illness.
We will return to the states their historic role
of regulating local insurance markets, limit federal
requirements on both private insurance and
Medicaid, and call on state officials to reconsider the
costly medical mandates, imposed under their own
laws, that price millions of low-income families out
of the insurance market. To guarantee first-rate care
for the needy, we propose to block grant Medicaid
and other payments and to assist all patients,
including those with pre-existing conditions, to
obtain coverage in a robust consumer market.
Through Obamacare, the current Administration has
promoted the notion of abortion as healthcare. We,
however, affirm the dignity of women by protecting
the sanctity of human life. Numerous studies have
shown that abortion endangers the health and wellbeing
of women, and we stand firmly against it.
To ensure vigorous competition in healthcare,
and because cost-awareness is the best guard
against over-utilization, we will promote price
transparency so consumers can know the cost
of treatments before they agree to them. We will
empower individuals and small businesses to form
purchasing pools in order to expand coverage to
the uninsured. We believe that individuals with
preexisting conditions who maintain continuous
coverage should be protected from discrimination.
We applaud the advance of technology in electronic
medical records while affirming patient privacy and
ownership of personal health information.
Consumer choice is the most powerful factor in
healthcare reform. Today’s highly mobile workforce
needs portability of insurance coverage that can go with them from job to job. The need to maintain
coverage should not dictate where families have to
live and work. We propose to end tax discrimination
against the individual purchase of insurance and
allow consumers to buy insurance across state
lines. In light of that, we propose repealing the 1945
McCarran-Ferguson Act which protects insurance
companies from anti-trust litigation. We look to
the growth of Health Savings Accounts and Health
Reimbursement Accounts that empower patients
and advance choice in healthcare.
Our aging population must have access to safe
and affordable care. Because most seniors desire
to age at home, we will make homecare a priority
in public policy and will implement programs to
protect against elder abuse.
Protecting Individual Conscience in Healthcare
America’s healthcare professionals should not
be forced to choose between following their faith
and practicing their profession. We respect the
rights of conscience of healthcare professionals,
doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and organizations,
especially the faith-based groups which provide
a major portion of care for the nation and the
needy. We support the ability of all organizations to
provide, purchase, or enroll in healthcare coverage
consistent with their religious, moral, or ethical
convictions without discrimination or penalty.
We support the right of parents to determine the
proper medical treatment and therapy for their
minor children. We support the right of parents
to consent to medical treatment for their minor
children and urge enactment of legislation that
would require parental consent for their daughter
to be transported across state lines for abortion.
Providers should not be permitted to unilaterally
withhold services because a patient’s life is deemed
not worth living. American taxpayers should not be
forced to fund abortion. As Democrats abandon
this four decade-old bipartisan consensus, we
call for codification of the Hyde Amendment and
its application across the government, including
Obamacare. We call for a permanent ban on federal
funding and subsidies for abortion and healthcare
plans that include abortion coverage.
Better Care and Lower Costs: Tort Reform
Medical malpractice lawsuits have ballooned
the cost of healthcare for everyone by forcing
physicians to practice defensive medicine through
tests and treatments which otherwise might be
optional. Rural America is especially affected as
obstetricians, surgeons, and other providers move
to urban settings or retire in the face of escalating
insurance premiums. Many Republican Governors
have advanced the legal reforms necessary to
reverse that trend. We support state and federal
legislation to cap non-economic damages in
medical malpractice lawsuits, thereby relieving
conscientious providers of burdens that are not
rightly theirs and addressing a serious cause of
higher medical bills.
Advancing Research and Development in Healthcare
American medicine is poised to enter a new
era of technological advance. Federal and private
investment in basic and applied biomedical
research holds enormous promise, especially with
diseases and disorders like autism, Alzheimer’s,
and Parkinson’s. Just as we today take for granted
wonders that seemed impossible a few decades ago
— MRIs and CAT scans, robotic surgery, and in utero
treatment — patients a decade hence will have
care and treatment that will make much of today’s
medicine look primitive. Modern miracles involving
genetics, the immune system, cures for deadly
diseases, and more are in the research pipeline. This is the consequence of marrying significant
investment, both public and private, with the world’s
best talent, a formula that has for a century given
the American people the world’s best healthcare.
We are determined that it should continue to do
so, especially as we confront new dangers like
Ebola, Zika, Chikungunya, and antibiotic-resistant
pathogens.
To continue our headway against breast
and prostate cancer, diabetes, and other killers,
research must consider the needs of formerly
neglected demographic groups. We call for
expanded support for the stem cell research that
now offers the greatest hope for many afflictions
— through adult stem cells, umbilical cord blood, and cells reprogrammed into pluripotent stem cells
— without the destruction of embryonic human
life. We urge a ban on human cloning for research
or reproduction, and a ban on the creation of, or
experimentation on, human embryos for research.
We applaud Congress’ ban on the FDA approval
of research involving three-parent embryos. We
believe the FDA’s approval of Mifeprex, a dangerous
abortifacient formerly known as RU-486, threatens
women’s health, as does the agency’s endorsement
of over-the-counter sales of powerful contraceptives
without a physician’s recommendation. We support
cutting federal and state funding for entities that
endanger women’s health by performing abortions
in a manner inconsistent with federal or state law.
Putting Patients First: Reforming the FDA
The United States has led life sciences and
medical innovation for decades, bringing millions
of high-paying jobs to our country and helping
Americans and people around the world live longer,
healthier lives. Unfortunately, the continuously
increasing burden of governmental regulation
and red tape is taking its toll on our innovative
companies, and their pipeline of new life-saving
devices and drugs to our nation’s patients is
slowing and diminishing. The FDA has slowly but
relentlessly changed into an agency that more and
more puts the public health at risk by delaying,
chilling, and killing the development of new devices,
drugs and biologics that can promote our lives
and our health. The FDA needs leadership that
can reform the agency for our century and fix the
lack of predictability, consistency, transparency
and efficiency at the agency. The FDA needs to
return to its traditional emphasis on hard science
and approving new breakthrough medicines, rather
than divert its attention and consume its resources
trying to overregulate electronic health records
or vaping. We pledge to restore the FDA to its
position as the premier scientific health agency,
focused on both promoting and protecting the
public health in equal measure, so we can ensure
that Americans live longer, healthier lives, that
the United States remains the world leader in life
sciences and medical innovation, that millions of
high-paying, cutting-edge device and drug jobs stay
in the United States, that U.S. patients benefit first
and most from new devices and drugs, and that the
FDA no longer wastes U.S. taxpayer and innovators’
resources through bureaucratic red tape and legal
uncertainty. We commend those states that have
passed Right to Try legislation, allowing terminally
ill patients the right to try investigational medicines
not yet approved by the FDA. We urge Congress to
pass federal legislation to give all Americans with
terminal illnesses the right to try.[6][7]
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Pence on healthcare
