CHICAGO -- State Rep. Wes Culver, R-Goshen, participated in a health care summit sponsored by GOPAC, an organization that recruits and trains candidates at the state and local level. The summit was focused on how states can provide local solutions to the nation's healt care challenges.

As part of that summit, Culver was included in a press conference with legislators from other states, as well as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, which addressed health care reform on a state level.

"In my state of Indiana, every man, woman and child will find themselves on the hook for $4,247 in combined state and federal obligations if this measure becomes law," Culver said in prepared remarks sent out Thursday. "If the federal government ends up forcing the states to pick up the cost of extending health care benefits to more lower-income individuals, essentially creating a tremendous new unfunded mandate, every person in Indiana will face an additional $900 in tax liability."

"Through our Healthy Indiana Program, and our CHOICE program for senior citizens and the disabled (Community and Home Options to Institutional Care for the Elderly and Disabled), Indiana has focused reform attempts on the critical doctor-patient relationship. By including measures that give an ownership interest in their health insurance plan to the people enrolled in those programs, we have seen the level of care that these people receive increase while the number of unnecessary emergency room visits decrease."

Truth Staff