Republicans 'committed' to repeal of health care reform law
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If Mitt Romney is elected president and Republicans win control of the Senate and retain their majority in the House of Representatives, that will “guarantee” that the 2010 health care reform law is never fully implemented, according to the party platform adopted Tuesday by delegates at the GOP convention in Tampa.
“Congressional Republicans are committed to its repeal; and a Republican president on the first day in office will use his legitimate waiver authority under that law to halt its progress and then will sign its repeal,” the platform says.
The platform describes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as the “high-water mark of an outdated liberalism, the latest attempt to impose upon Americans a euro-style bureaucracy to manage all aspects of our lives.”
The health care reform law, the platform says, “is falling by the weight of its own confusing, unworkable, budget-busting and conflicting provisions.”
The platform also says Republicans will push to “empower” individuals and small business to form health care purchasing pools as well as to eliminate any federal subsidies on health care plans that provide coverage for abortion. Under current law, a self-funded employer, for example, can take a tax deduction for abortion-related expenses its health care plan covers.
In the pension arena, the platform says many plans are increasingly underfunded by overestimating their rates of returns on investments, which in turn endangers the integrity of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which itself reported a $26 billion deficit in fiscal 2011.
As a first step toward possible corrective action, the platform calls for the establishment of a presidential panel to review private plans that are insured by the PBGC.
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