Tennessee's newest members of Congress are preparing to vote today to honor their campaign pledge to try to repeal the health care reform law adopted by the previous Congress.
In his first speech on the floor of the U.S. House on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., cited estimates by the National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation that the employer mandate in the new law could lead to a loss of 1.6 million jobs.
"As a small-business owner for the past 24 years, I know first-hand the kind of damage this legislation would do to American small business if it is allowed to be put into place," said Fleischmann, a Chattanooga attorney elected in November to succeed 16-year incumbent Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.
But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said most of the job losses would come from people who no longer have to work, or can downshift to less demanding employment, because insurance will be available outside the job.
U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn., a Jasper physician who defeated Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., said Tennessee's experience with TennCare showed the problems with expanding government health care coverage and that the new health care law will force rationing of care for patients.
"It simply cannot be funded and will ultimately lead to the socialization of medicine, an idea that was widely rejected by Americans both in the '90s and at present," he said.
Local Democrats and health care supporters conducted a telephone bank in Chattanooga on Tuesday morning to call upon supporters of the health care reforms to try to get Reps. Fleischmann and DesJarlais to change their minds.
Dr. Paul Hendricks, an emergency room physician at Memorial Hospital, said the health reform changes will broaden coverage and help more Americans get better health services through insured plans with preventative care. That would be more cost effective than having such persons continue to wait for major illnesses to be treated in hospital emergency rooms, he said.