Across America,
people will talk this week about securing health care coverage for
the 41 million folks who go to bed every night with little or no
access to health care.
Senator Hatch and I are here to build on this grassroots involvement
– and encourage more of the same, by introducing bipartisan
legislation with a new approach to creating a health care system
that works for everybody. Like the advocates making the case to
expand coverage for the uninsured, Senator Hatch and I believe that
public involvement, followed by political accountability, is the
key to creating a health care system that works for all.
For six decades Washington has treated the road to health care
reform like a one-way street. Health plans have been conceived by
politicians in the nation’s capital and handed down to the
American people by way of special interest groups who ripped them
into tiny, useless pieces in the process. Senator Hatch and I have
a bipartisan plan to change that process forever.
Under our Health Care that Works for All Americans legislation,
Congress will have to vote on the people’s priorities –
from expanding health coverage for the uninsured, to cost containment,
to reducing waste and inefficiency. Understand what a revolution
this would be in the annals of health care reform! In 1993 and 1994,
the last major health care reform debate, there wasn’t one
substantive vote on the floor of either the House or the Senate
to bring about major health reform. Our legislation will change
that by guaranteeing that all reform proposals that spring from
public participation, from the kind of involvement we’re seeing
this week, will be voted on by the people’s representatives.
For decades, the failed concept of top-down health reform has produced
the same results: the United States is the only Western industrialized
nation that hasn’t figured out a way to cover everybody. This
week, we’ll hear from 41 million Americans without health
coverage, but millions more are just one paycheck or one pink slip
away from losing coverage. Millions more are underinsured. They
have some insurance coverage, they may not be likely to lose it
today, but it just doesn’t cover enough, or it won’t
pay for good care.
Ours is the only bipartisan Congressional proposal to stop the
hemorrhaging of lives and dollars from a health system that now
spends so much money that every American could be sent a check for
more than $4,000 to purchase coverage for a year. Countless small
businesses are getting 25 percent hikes in their health insurance
premiums year after year. Health care providers are cutting services.
Expanding the use of technological innovations like electronic medical
records is being slow-walked. All these issues on on the table for
the people. Their legislation can force changes in each of these
areas.
The bill first allows Americans to state what kind of health care
services they want, and who should pay. A Citizens’ Health
Care Working Group is established to help the people get involved
and make informed choices through community meetings and online.
Let me be clear: this working group won’t be another blue
ribbon commission with a bunch of Congresspeople sitting around
calling the shots. Instead, it’s a conduit for the people’s
preferences. This is a new approach that will let citizens drive
the health reform debate and then force Congress to follow up –
by writing legislation that reflects the people’s will.
It’s time to recognize that health care is like an ecosystem.
Covering the uninsured is a critically important need, but Congress
has to go further and make it part of a plan that fixes the whole
system. So Senator Hatch and I have decided during this important
week to stress that our plan can meet the critical needs of the
uninsured, and spark an unprecedented drive toward the fundamental
changes that are needed for our health system as a whole.
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