Saving by Insurance

Federally mandated health insurance to be avoided, audience told

Federally mandated health insurance should be avoided at all costs, three Republican legislators told several hundred people at Arrow Heights Baptist Church on Tuesday night.

State Sen. Bill Brown and Reps. Mike Ritze and John Trebilcock, all of Broken Arrow, said health-care reform bills being debated in Congress are financially unfeasible and are threats to individual freedom.

'It all comes down to one word ' liberty,' said Trebilcock, 'the liberty to not have health care (insurance) if you don't want it.'

One element of the proposals under discussion are financial penalties for large employers who do not provide insurance and for individuals who do not buy private policies or sign up for a government-run plan.

Ritze says he will introduce legislation next session that would bar the federal government from imposing such penalties.

'Whatever the federal government does, we will stop it at the border of Oklahoma,' he said.

Ritze, a practicing physician, said the first step to solving the nation's health-care problems is to 'get the government out of health care.'

'Let the free enterprise system solve the problem we have,' he said.

Later, Ritze said he didn't mean that the federal government should stop funding Medicaid or Medicare or that the state of Oklahoma should stop supporting its Sooner Care program, which subsidizes private insurance premiums for small businesses and low-income individuals.

Health-care costs, he said, could be drastically reduced through malpractice law reform, eliminating

mandated insurance coverages, healthier living and removing barriers to competition in the insurance industry.

Asked what he would do about people who can't afford insurance, Ritze said, 'We would work with them.'

Brown, an insurance agent, said insurance companies must change some of their practices and streamline operations. Simplifying claim forms and electronic filing, he said, would save substantial sums of money.

Nationalizing health care, he said, would create a huge, ineffective bureaucracy that could bankrupt the nation.

Strictly speaking, none of the proposals in Congress call for nationalization of the health-care system. Critics and even some supporters believe that the so-called 'public option' ' a program similar to Medicare for low-income individuals and small businesses ' would eventually dominate private health insurers, however.

'The people on the other side of this issue are not our enemies,' said Trebilcock. 'They are fellow Americans who are misguided. I don't think shouting at them is going to convince them otherwise.'