Barbour lists problems with healthcare reform

JACKSON — Gov. Haley Barbour and 19 other Republican governors have submitted a list of potential healthcare law improvements for the administration to consider, if the law passed last year by the Democratic Congress isn’t repealed or struck down by the courts.

“In addition to its constitutional infringements, we believe the system proposed by the (administration) is seriously flawed, favors dependency over personal responsibility and will ultimately destroy the private insurance market,” the letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reads. “Because of this, we do not wish to be the federal government’s agents in this policy in its present form.

“We wish states had been given more opportunity to provide input when the (law) was being drafted. We believe in its current form the law will force our health care system down a path sure to lead to higher costs and the disruption or discontinuation of millions of Americans’ insurance plans.”

The President’s healthcare law “in its current form threatens to destroy our budgets and perpetuate and magnify the most costly aspects of our health care system,” the letter states.