Buchanan helps lead GOP task force in providing healthcare improvement policy solutions

Healthy Future Task Force Co-Chair U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) and members of its Affordability Subcommittee are promoting policy solutions that they say offer a modernized and personalized approach to health that focuses on lower costs, more options, and peace of mind.

Rep. Buchanan and fellow task force co-chair U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY) on July 14 led the subcommittee in announcing policy solutions to make healthcare more accessible and affordable.

“While Democrats are working towards a single-payer healthcare system that would eliminate employer-sponsored coverage, reduce choices for patients, raise taxes, and undermine the increasingly popular Medicare Advantage program, Republicans on the Healthy Future Task Force are putting forward patient-centered solutions with more choices designed to lower health care costs,” Reps. Buchanan and Guthrie said in a joint statement. 

The Affordability Subcommittee’s work will improve healthcare options for workers, make healthcare benefits more affordable for small business owners and employees, and lower costs for patient treatments and care, the Republican lawmakers said. 

“Republicans will continue advancing these solutions to fix our broken healthcare system in order to keep Americans healthy, improve their standard of living and help them live longer,” said Rep. Buchanan and Rep. Guthrie.

Specifically, the subcommittee’s policy solutions would improve both workers’ ability to control and afford their health care, as well as small business owners’ ability to provide health insurance at a low cost and high value for employees, according to a one-page summary provided by the task force.

Additionally, the solutions would promote innovation and transparency to empower patients, provide more affordable options, and lower costs and increase choices by fostering competition and targeting incentives that drive consolidation and limit competition, the summary says.

Members of the Affordability Subcommittee, one of five task force subcommittees, also outlined the policy solutions in a July 13 commentary published in the Daily Signal, including proposals to lower the costs of health insurance and overall health care by increasing competition, transparency, and choices. 

The Affordability Subcommittee also recently hosted a roundtable with small business owners to discuss the policy solutions and their benefits, according to Rep. Buchanan’s office.