Moran Asks Sebelius to Intervene on Health Care with President Obama

(Overland Park, Kan.) – Kansas First District Congressman and Senate Candidate Jerry Moran, (R-Hays), today issued a direct appeal to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to intervene with the President on his decision to use the budget reconciliation process to pass his proposal.

“Today, I am asking for Secretary Sebelius to intervene with President Obama on the way in which he apparently intends to override the clear will of the American people,” said Moran. “It is one thing for there to be policy differences between the President and so many of the people on this matter. It is quite another matter for President Obama to decide that the government will take over one-sixth of the American economy through the use of an arcane procedural maneuver never intended for a change of this magnitude.”

Moran asked that Sebelius use her position within the Administration to urge the President to reconsider his current course. “Secretary Sebelius, as a Kansan and as a former governor of Kansas, surely knows how intensely the people of our state and the nation feel about this monstrous proposal and the way President Obama is now attempting to get his way on it,” said Moran. “I assume that Secretary Sebelius must have the President’s ear on this matter and I’m respectfully asking that she use her position to urge President Obama to abandon his current course by using the so-called nuclear option.”

Moran supports free market reforms of the health care system, including lifting bans on the sale of insurance across state lines, tort reform to limit outrageous legal expenses imposed on health care providers, portability of health insurance from job to job and removing pre-existing conditions as a barrier to the provision of health insurance, among other proposals.

Moran asked the people of Kansas to let Secretary Sebelius know how they feel about President Obama’s health care plans and how he intends to pass the legislation. He urged voters to contact Sebelius using the department’s website at http://www.hhs.gov/ContactUs.html or by calling the Department’s general toll-free number, 1-877-696-6775. Moran also called on the Secretary to reconsider the structure of her face page on the website, which only offers a “state your support” of health care reform opportunity on the site. “Shouldn’t the department’s official website give the American people an actual opportunity to provide their thoughts, either way, on the matter,” asked Moran.

“There are right ways to improve the health care available to the American people and there are wrong ways which will hurt our system and cause a decline in health care,” said Moran. “The President campaigned as a post-partisan leader ready to work transparently and across the aisle on the large issues that we face. Instead, the process has been hidden and President Obama now intends to inappropriately use the budget reconciliation process to force this monstrosity on the people of this country. It is wrong and I ask that Secretary Sebelius, even if she supports this program, intervene with President Obama on the method he is now employing to get his way.”