Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) issued the following statement after Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled the combined health care legislation she and other House Democrat leaders have spent the past few weeks crafting behind closed doors.

“Today we learned that this is no longer the People’s House; it is now Pelosi’s House,” said Congressman Price. “After all the debate in Congress and across the country, the Speaker has produced a bill that is essentially the same as the one she started with months ago. This 2,000 page plan is a government takeover that will limit choice, competition, and innovation in health care while increasing costs and decreasing quality. It includes a job-killing employer mandate, an individual mandate that requires Washington bureaucrats to define what kind of coverage is acceptable, burdensome tax increases, cuts to Medicare Advantage benefits, and a huge expansion of Medicaid that will break already strained state budgets. Americans demonstrated their strong opposition to this government takeover of health care last summer, yet their wishes have been totally ignored by the Democrat leaders who wrote this bill behind closed doors. The American people now know that what Nancy Pelosi wants is what the American people will get.

“There is a stark contrast between the House Democrats’ bill and H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act, introduced by the RSC last July. While the Democrats’ plan will place Washington bureaucrats in between you and your doctor, our plan follows a patient-centered approach that empowers Americans to truly own and control their health coverage. The people of this country want reforms that provide them with more choices, more competition, more innovation, higher quality, and lower costs. Instead, Democrat leaders have worked in secret to write a bill that does exactly the opposite. Speaker Pelosi may think she’s won a political victory by shutting Republicans out of this process, but the real defeat will be felt by all American patients.”

NOTE: The Republican Study Committee has introduced H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act. H.R. 3400 would: 1) make access to coverage affordable for all Americans; 2) make coverage truly owned and controlled by the patient; 3) improve the health care delivery structure; and 4) rein in out-of-control costs, including robust liability reform.