(Memphis, Tenn.) – The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) the nation’s premier waste-fighting organization, today reacted to the many  anti-managed care bills that have been introduced in Congress in the last three months.

“The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, and its 7,585 members in Tennessee, are greatly concerned about the healthcare legislation that has been introduced in Congress that expands liability to employers and creates new government mandates that will drive up the cost of health insurance.” said CCAGW President Thomas A. Schatz.   “Politicians forget that employers do not have to provide generous healthcare benefits.  If the price of insurance is made more costly, many employers may choose to drop health insurance altogether.  The result will be more uninsured Americans – the exact opposite of what is needed in healthcare reform.”

“The last thing the Congress needs to do is pass top-down, Washington-knows-best healthcare legislation. That kind of legislation creates huge federal and state health agencies and puts bureaucrats in charge of health decisions.  Unfortunately, some members of Congress have not gotten the message that Americans still do not want government-run healthcare,” continued Schatz.

Schatz cited legislation introduced by Congressman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) that would place a plethora of mandates on managed care and open employers up to malpractice lawsuits.  “This legislation actually provides disincentives for small businesses to provide health coverage to their workers.  Faced with the threat of liability from employees through the company’s healthcare plan, employers will simply drop health insurance coverage for their employees quicker than an action scene from E.R..”

“Most of these so called patient protection bills are nothing more than warmed up versions of President Clinton’s Health Care Security Act, which was soundly rejected by the American people.  Americans need to be wary of soothing words like “quality” and “choice” in healthcare legislation because the people that will be deciding what those words mean are government bureaucrats, not consumers.  Instead, we need to be thinking about ways to increase access to healthcare, not limiting access by passing government mandates that drive up costs,” Schatz concluded.

CCAGW is a 600,000-member, nonprofit taxpayer watchdog group dedicated to educating Americans about government waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.