Amador County – California District 3 Congressman Dan Lungren has re-introduced legislation to repeal health care legislation passed last year, looking to restore the “doctor-patient relationship.”
Brian Kaveney of the Congressman’s office in a release Wednesday said Lungren “voted to begin the implementation of commonsense alternatives to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” which was passed last year.
Kaveney said “voting for the repeal of a government-run health care system sets the stage for Lungren’s bill to repeal the onerous 1099 reporting requirement to be brought to the floor for consideration.”
In the release following the vote, Lungren said: “Last year the American people and small business spoke and I listened. The bill that was pushed through Congress last year includes a number of provisions that are of concern to the American people.”
He said: “Not only does it require every American to purchase health insurance, but it dictates the type of policy they must buy and where they must buy it.” Lungren said the “health care law hinders the creation of jobs, when constituents in my district still face unemployment rates that exceed 12 percent.”
Lungren said the “law does not address rising health care costs, and it places the massive federal bureaucracy between patients and their doctors. Personal health care decisions should be made by patients, families and doctors, not by bureaucrats or politicians in Washington.”
“We all agree that health care can and should be improved,” Lungren said, “but last year’s bill was not well thought out. In spite of two years of debate on health care, the bill that was ultimately passed reads like an afterthought, with many provisions that simply don’t make sense.”
He said: “We need to focus on increasing patient choice for all Americans without losing the quality to which people are accustomed.”
The bill was initially introduced after last year’s approval of the Affordable Care Act, but it fell short of the 218 signatures needed to force a vote.
Lungren’s bill would repeal a 1099 tax reporting requirement from the law, that would require businesses to report to the IRS any purchases of goods or services from one company that total more than $600 in one year.
The Republican Party last September issued a “Pledge to America” to “repeal this job-killing small business mandate.” The pledge said: “This 1099 reporting mandate is so overbearing that the IRS ombudsman has determined that the agency is ill-equipped to handle all the resulting paperwork.”
Last week, Lungren announced that 245 signatures supported the bill, including 12 Democrats. The bill is called “The Small Business Paperwork Mandate Elimination Act.”
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