Healthcare

Issues:

  • Too many of our citizens lack access to basic healthcare.  The uninsured flood emergency rooms with health problems that could be handled in clinics and doctors’ offices.
  • Healthcare costs have skyrocketed in the last decade.  Every penny of increase in middle-class wages has been spent on rising health insurance premiums.
  • Too often, insurance policies cover crisis care but not preventative care, even though prevention saves money and lives.
  • When a health crisis strikes, many families discover that their insurance coverage is inadequate or the insurance company hostile.  Responsible, hard-working people are plunged into debt and bankruptcy while they fight to provide life-saving care for loved ones.

Solutions:

  • As a society we must ensure that every citizen has access to affordable healthcare.  To do less is both unconscionable and unwise.  Health risks increase for us all when we fail to provide healthcare for everyone. 
  • Rising costs cannot be contained without enacting reforms.  Ultimately, I favor a public option, but we can’t wait for the perfect moment.  Something must be done now.
  • We must begin to emphasize healthy lifestyles and disease prevention as ways to avoid the huge costs that illness brings. 
  • Our current system encourages unnecessary tests and procedures, sometimes to increase profits but often to avoid malpractice claims.  Overhaul of the entire system is needed.
  • We spent our money bailing out Wall Street and the auto industry, now it’s time to provide economic protection for individual Americans who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in a healthcare crisis.  Hard-working, responsible Americans must not be forced to lose their homes or their jobs.  We must not become complacent or meaningful reform will not happen.