Thankfully, our Republican-led Congress and President Trump are beginning the process of dismantling Obamacare, i.e. the so-called Affordable Care Act.

It won’t be easy, but Republicans have promised the American people a better way on health care, and our state and national leaders must deliver.

Voters have elected a Republican majority in D.C., expecting them to repeal Obamacare. If they do this correctly, they can unleash the same power of innovation that has made cell-phones inexpensive and ubiquitous, that has given every American the opportunity to travel worldwide faster and cheaper than imaginable, and that has made cars safer, faster and more reliable than ever before.

For some context, approximately one out of every 16 members of our community work directly for hospitals. These are not just doctors and nurses, but administrators, janitors, food service workers, technicians and therapists. All these jobs depend on the federal government making good on the reimbursements they pay for services through Medicare and Medicaid.

Because community hospitals and clinics generally receive a higher proportion of their operational resources from Medicare and Medicaid, they will be the most directly impacted. Some will have to limit services, others will have to close their doors altogether. Regardless, this means one thing: people who need medical care will either go without it or will have to travel long distances to get the care they need.

When Obamacare was implemented, it enacted huge cuts to the rate the federal government reimburses for services. It is another case of the government living by a different set of rules than regular people. For example, the American Hospital Association reported $57.8 billion in government underpayments to hospitals last year. This means the rest of us have to pick up that cost through higher drug prices and higher insurance premiums.

I’m proud that my fellow Republicans in Washington are determined to fulfill their campaign promise to repeal the ACA. But this is no mere public policy debate because real people’s lives and jobs are on the line. The GOP Congress and President Trump must also keep another of their campaign promises – to do right by American workers – if they want this repeal to truly improve the lives and health care of the American people.

When Republicans in Congress repeal Obamacare as they have pledged, they must make sure to replace it with a fair and free market where the government plays by the same rules as the rest of us. This means paying fair market value for health care services. Washington D.C. has mismanaged Medicare and Medicaid for years, forcing the rest of us to pick up the tab in other ways.

Any manipulation of fair market repayments to our hospitals should be reversed in the efforts to repeal Obamacare because those hospitals are so essential to our state, particularly rural and urban communities who rely so heavily on community hospitals.

The first step to unleashing reform and innovation in health care is to give private entrepreneurs and their innovative ideas a level playing field. This can’t happen without a fair and free market for health care service providers so we must ensure that the federal government reimburses at a fair market rate for the indispensable services our hospitals provide. Please join me encourage our members of Congress to make innovation and fairness the key to repealing Obamacare.