WASHINGTON, DC - Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), member of the Senate Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committees, recently made the following statement regarding a government run health care plan:
 
"I am disappointed that the Democratic Leadership continues to push forward with a big government, more spending and higher taxes approach as their solution for reforming our health care system. Simply putting new window dressing on the failed idea of a government plan is absolutely the wrong way to address a critical national issue that affects every American life and every American business.
 
"At a time when major government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are already on a path to financial collapse, creating a brand new government program will not only worsen our long term financial outlook but also negatively impact American families who enjoy the private coverage of their choice. A recent study estimated the cost-shifting from government-run programs like Medicare already costs families with private insurance nearly $1800 more per year. Creating another government plan will only exaggerate this problem and take away private insurance choices from families - something even President Obama pledged to protect.  
 
"Washington-run programs undermine market-based competition through their ability to impose price controls and shift costs to other purchasers.  Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition.  In his March, 2009 testimony before  the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Doug Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, testified that it would be ‘extremely difficult' to create ‘a system where a public plan could compete on a level playing field' against private coverage. The end result would be a federal government takeover of our healthcare system, taking decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and placing them in the hands of a Washington bureaucracy.
 
"Today's decision by the Democratic Leadership will create one of the largest new government entitlement programs in a generation.  Make no mistake about it, once this entitlement has been implemented it will be impossible to dismantle.  Even the President recognized, in his address to a joint session of Congress, that my home state of Utah has gotten it right when it comes to health care. Companies working to use market-based principles to reform health care and lower premiums and costs for families such as IHC and HCA will be thwarted in their efforts to help consumers by the creation of this government plan which would not compete on a level playing field.
 
"It is time for us to listen to the voice of the American people. In a recent Gallup poll almost 58 percent of Americans support a gradual approach to health care reform. Our nation is facing a national deficit of $1.4 trillion, the highest since World War II, let us commit to a fresh start and write a truly bipartisan and fiscally responsible solution that we can all be proud of."