Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a senior member of the two Senate committees responsible for drafting health reform, said he has concerns with Democrats' plans to give the government more power in healthcare.
At a press briefing Thursday morning, he said states are best qualified to make the reforms necessary for their particular situations.
If some Democrats get their way, he said, "instead of 50 state laboratories, we'd be stuck with all the bureaucracy of the federal government."
"If we do healthcare reform, it's not going to be a one-size-fits-all. That's why it's going to have to be bipartisan," Hatch said. "States have different demographics and different needs. Washington doesn't understand the respective problems of the states."
Hatch is a member of both the Senate Finance and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committees, which are working on health reform legislation. He said so far there is consideration for both parties' ideas, but he fears that some Democrats will push hard to use the budget reconciliation process to ram their reform measures through. This process would take fewer votes to pass and doesn't allow for debate.
"If they use reconciliation, they will look like fools," he said. "In five years, they won't have a program they like. It would make heathcare reform look like Swiss cheese."
Hatch said Democrats are trying to push "more and more people" into the Medicaid and Medicare program. "I believe what we will have is government run healthcare," he said.
At a Wednesday hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the Obama Administration does not want government-run, single-payer healthcare. Rather, Obama will push Congress to pass legislation that will shore up the current employer-based system and develop a public payer option to provide competition for quality of care and more access for Americans.
Hatch, like several of his Republican colleagues at the House Ways and Means hearing on Wednesday, cited a Lewin Group study that shows some 119.1 million Americans would lose coverage under employer-based plans if a public plan were introduced into the market.
Hatch said the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), the federal law that sets minimum standards for most voluntarily established pension and health plans in private industry, "works in many ways" and is "difficult to change."
Obama has asked that Republicans come forward with alternative health reform plans. So far only one Republican plan has been introduced, a bipartisan plan sponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Robert Bennett (R-Utah).
Hatch said he can't support the Wyden-Bennett plan, "but it has some good ideas."
"I would like to see a Republican back-up plan," he added. "To the extent that we aren't making headway, we should come up with our own plan."
Hatch said he sees good bipartisan cooperation in the Senate, but he has doubts about the House over the long haul.