GOP lawmaker warns against health-care shift

WASHINGTON -- A GOP congresswoman grateful for quick detection of her breast cancer says Democratic health overhaul plans could mean life-threatening delays in treatment.

Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina said in her party's weekly radio and Internet address that her diagnosis "took six doctors, three mammograms and one ultrasound before they finally they found my cancer. This process took only a few weeks."

"Under the government-run health-care system they have in Canada and the United Kingdom, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to get those tests so quickly," she said."When it comes to life-threatening diseases like cancer, delay could mean death."

Democrats are looking for competition to private insurance companies to help drive prices down: a government-run insurance option, a trigger to add that option later; or nonprofit insurance cooperatives, designed to compete with private industry and give consumers more choices.

"These so-called health-care reform bills have different names: a public option, a co-op, a trigger," Myrick said. "Make no mistake, these are all gateways to government-run health care."

She said the proposals would mean higher taxes for small business owners "at a time when unemployment is nearing 10 percent and analysts are predicting that any kind of recovery will be a jobless one."

She also said seniors should expect massive cuts to Medicare.