By Rep. French Hill

This Congress, the House has worked hard to fix problems with America’s health care system. We have repealed the Individual Mandate penalty and the death panels instituted by Obamacare, and passed the Right to Try Act, which offers terminally ill patients another route for potential help, to name a few.

Obamacare, with its top-down, one-size-fits-all mandates, is a failure. It has led to decreased health care access, and increased costs. By voting for it, Democrats took the decision making out of physicians’ hands and put it into the hands of Washington bureaucrats.

This misguided law created a death panel of appointed officials that would have had the power to implement changes to Medicare that could result in denial of drugs and treatments to seniors and cost lives. With the passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, we eliminated this panel.

Another provision of Obamacare was the Individual Mandate, which forced Americans to pay a hefty tax penalty if they could not afford health care coverage. As part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we repealed the Individual Mandate penalty to ensure that Americans are not forced to have coverage they do not want or cannot afford.

We still have much work to do. It is not enough to repeal Obamacare’s most unfavorable parts—Congress has to replace it with real, patient-centered health care reform that is both affordable and accessible.

These reforms should aim to encourage innovation, increase competition and choice, reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and reform medical malpractice. With the right kind of reforms, we can increase coverage and access in a cost-effective manner and still ensure people with pre-existing conditions have access to affordable health care.

Instead of the current government-knows-best mentality, individuals should be empowered and encouraged to take control of and responsibility for their own health care.