Republicans warn against health care changes

Republicans say the Obama administration's attempt to overhaul the health system will lead to government-run British- or Canadian-style health care that causes delays in treatment, threatening your health and even worse.

Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina issued the latest warning against a Democratic-backed health care overhaul as she recalled her fight with breast cancer. She said in the Republican weekly radio and Internet address that her diagnosis "took six doctors, three mammograms and one ultrasound before they finally they found my cancer. This process took only a few weeks."

"Under the government-run health care system they have in Canada and the United Kingdom, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to get those tests so quickly," she said. "One international study found that three times as many citizens in those countries wait longer than a month to see a specialist. When it comes to life-threatening diseases like cancer, delay could mean death."

Democrats are looking for competition to private insurance companies to help drive prices down: a government-run insurance option, a trigger to add that option later; or nonprofit insurance cooperatives, designed to compete with private industry and give consumers more choices.

"These so-called health care reform bills have different names: a public option, a co-op, a trigger," Myrick said. "Make no mistake, these are all gateways to government-run health care."

She said that the proposals mean higher taxes for small business owners "at a time when unemployment is nearing 10 percent and analysts are predicting that any kind of recovery will be a jobless one."

She noted that she's a former small-business owner.

"I can tell you from experience that this is the worst possible time to be imposing new, job-killing taxes. In fact, the nation's largest small business association found the health care tax increases being proposed would lead to the elimination of more than 1.6 million jobs."

She said seniors should expect massive cuts to Medicare, the government-run health care plan for the elderly.

"Doing this now, without implementing significant reforms to make the program more efficient, would leave seniors susceptible to the rationing of care," she said.

Obama has said eliminating "waste and abuse" in the Medicare and Medicaid programs will help the government find money to cover most of the Americans now without insurance.

Myrick said the overhaul "comes at a price tag of roughly $1 trillion in the midst of a year in which the government continues to set new records for red ink."

Obama has set a 10-year spending target of $900 billion for lawmakers considering various proposals.