GOP: Our Plan Will Repeal And Replace Obamacare

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Georgia) delivered this week’s GOP address to talk about the House Republicans’ “A Better Way” agenda.

Carter was Tuesday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”. Here are his words:

“Hello, I’m Buddy Carter, and I represent the first district of Georgia.

This week, I held seven town-hall meetings with people from all over our district. We talked about a lot of different issues. But the one thing I heard over and over again was this: People are frustrated.

They’re working as hard as ever to pay the bills and put food on the table. But they’re just not getting anywhere. Their problems are growing. But their paychecks aren’t. And at this point, they’ve come to see Washington as the place where bad ideas go to take root—and where good ideas go to die.

That’s why House Republicans are taking action. Earlier this year, we decided we had to go from being an opposition party to a proposition party. If we didn’t like the direction the country was going in, then it was up to us to offer an alternative. Well, now, we have offered that alternative. And we’re calling it a Better Way. It’s our six-part plan to get the country back on track. In it, we tackle some of the biggest issues of the day: poverty, national security, the economy, the Constitution, health care, and tax reform.

What I like best about our plan is that it isn’t some top-down, Washington-imposed mandate. Instead, we took a bottom-up, organic approach. This is a plan we developed with input we got from all of our members—and our constituents—over many months. We put out the call for the best thinking out there, and these are the ideas that rose to the occasion.

I want to tell you about one issue in particular: health care. I’ve been a pharmacist for many years now. In fact, I’m speaking to you from a hospital in my district. So this issue is especially important to me. And the health care law we have right now is a mess. It is destroying the health care system I worked in for more than 30 years—the best health care system in the world. This law makes some people pay less by making other people pay more. It tries to give more choices to some people by taking them away from others. And lost in the constant back-and-forth between insurers and Washington bureaucrats is the most important person: the patient. So our plan would repeal and replace Obamacare. We would clear out all the red tape and mandates that are taking away your choices, and let you pick a plan that works for you.

Our plan would also help accelerate the development of life-saving devices and therapies. For instance, this week I had the pleasure of visiting the Anderson Cancer Institute at Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, Georgia. These doctors are developing the very treatments we need to beat cancer and to save lives. And now what we need to do is to tear down barriers so that the innovative research being done at places like Anderson can go to the people who need it.

These are the kind of ideas we need to get America back on track. And this is how we can make real change in Washington: by listening to the people who sent us there. If you want to learn more about our plan, go to our website: better.gop. Thank you very much.”

The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 AM.