Jobs, not health care, should be the focus of Congress and the president, U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Genoa Township) told the Westerville Area Chamber of Commerce Tuesday.

"That's where the focus should be -- jobs and the economy," Tiberi said. "If (people) could have jobs, they could have health care."

Tiberi, who spoke and answered questions during the chamber's quarterly luncheon, said the $787-billion stimulus package passed in February has not helped those looking for work, as unemployment has climbed to more than 10 percent.

"We have not seen the jobs created that they thought were going to be created and we've added nearly $1-trillion to the deficit," he said.

The main problem with the stimulus bill, Tiberi said, is that money went toward growing government rather than going into the economy to help businesses.

"We just padded their government spending," he said. "Most of that money is geared toward government, not to entrepreneurs to create jobs."

In talking to local business owners, Tiberi said he has found a hesitancy to expand based on uncertainty about new mandates or taxes that will come out of Washington through initiatives such as health-care reform.

And the bills that have come forth in the House and Senate as part of proposed health-care reform will not have an effect on the system's existing problems, Tiberi said.

"There's nothing in the bills that will address the cost of health care," he said. "We don't deal with the cost curve. We don't deal with the deficits."

Rather, he said, the bills create taxes and mandates for individuals and businesses, along with new federal bureaucracies and entitlement programs.

One bill was passed by the House -- without Tiberi's vote -- last month and the other is being debated by the Senate. Neither maintains the president's promise that Americans who like their current health plans can keep them, he said.

Those plans could be lost because the bills would set requirements over what type of health coverage employers must provide, Tiberi said, meaning employers could choose not to provide health care and instead be charged a tax allowing their employees to be covered under a government health-care plan.

With a strong Democratic Party majority in both the House and Senate, Tiberi told the chamber that Republicans largely have been left out of the health-care debate, despite putting forth 40 different reform bills and offering many amendments to the bills being discussed.

Republican proposals Tiberi supported include opening state borders to allow individuals to shop for health-care plans among many different companies, much like people currently shop for car or home insurance.

"The president's right: There's really not a lot of competition in health care," Tiberi said.

Health-care reform also needs to address liability reform, protecting doctors from frivolous lawsuits that cause them to order more tests than needed to try to shield themselves from such suits, Tiberi said.

The bills now in Congress also don't deal with the broken Medicare and Medicaid systems, Tiberi said, which he said raises the cost of health care because the government does not reimburse doctors and hospitals for the services they perform.

As a result, he said, the cost of those services is either swallowed by the hospitals or shifted to those who have private insurance.

"They're not paying their load," Tiberi said. "Instead of fixing those systems, we create a new system."

Tiberi said he does not know what will become of the two current health-care bills, since one remains caught in a heated debate in the Senate, but he said he expects the Senate to pass some version.

After that, the two houses of Congress will have to resolve differences in their bills, giving legislators in the House another shot at the final legislation, Tiberi said.