Health Care

Approximately 44 million Americans, or more than 15 percent of the total population, are uninsured. One third of them are children. According to studies, Florida ranks sixth in the nation in terms of the percent of its population living without health insurance coverage, with the majority of its uninsured living in South Florida.

As a Member of Congress who is committed to universal health care coverage, I will explore ways to improve access to necessary health services to the uninsured, alleviate the cost of prescription drugs for our seniors, and ensure Medicare funding to hospitals and Medicare payments to physicians and other health care providers.

One important issue that has dominated Congress' health care debate has been adding a long overdue prescription drug plan to Medicare. President Bush recently signed into law a Republican-passed bill that completely disregards the first rule of medicine: do not harm. Rather than strengthening Medicare with a comprehensive benefit, President Bush's plan eviscerates Medicare as we know it, undermining many seniors who already have prescription drug coverage. The legislation privatizes Medicare, and it fails to combat skyrocketing drug costs.

More than 34 percent of those living in Florida's 23rd Congressional District are above age 55. The President's support for this legislation will cause over 150,000 Florida Medicare beneficiaries to lose their retiree health benefits and force some 300,000 Medicaid beneficiaries to pay more for prescription drugs than they currently do.

In Congress, I am leading the fight for a real prescription drug benefit plan under Medicare. I, along with many of my fellow Democrats, stand behind a plan that is:

• Affordable: With reasonable premiums and deductibles designed to significantly reduce the price of prescription drugs;
• Meaningful: With defined and guaranteed benefits;
• Within the Medicare program: Not a separate privatized plan that lets HMOs make all the decisions about costs and benefits; and
• Available to all seniors and disabled Americans on Medicare no matter where they live, rural or urban, or what their incomes are.

These inadequacies must be addressed in order to reform the current healthcare system. Additionally, I plan to continue to support efforts to pass a comprehensive Patients Bill of Rights that will improve access to necessary health services for all.

You can count on your Congressman to continue the fight for expanding health care coverage to ALL Americans and lowering prescription drug prices.