• Home
• About Amy
• Serving Minnesotans
• On the Issues
• Media Center
• Contact Amy
• FAQ

Sign Up for Our E-Newsletter

Health Care

Affordability, access and quality are my key priorities for health care. I believe every American should have access to quality, affordable health care. Minnesota already has one of the highest percentages of people with health care coverage in the nation, and there is much that the rest of the nation can learn from us. But Minnesotans also face higher health care costs than ever before—costs that have far outpaced the growth in personal and household income.

Many of our businesses, particularly small businesses, can no longer afford to bear the costs of health insurance even though they want to cover their employees. Employees are forced to pay a larger share of the premiums – or they get no health care insurance at all. This leads to more and more uninsured people who are forced to seek basic care in emergency rooms, the most expensive place to receive care. This raises the bill for the rest of us.

In many ways, we already enjoy the very best quality of care in the world—for those who have access and can afford it. But we need to do a better job of controlling costs and making health care more affordable, while expanding coverage and maintaining the quality of our medical research.

I believe that for way too long, the debate on health care in Washington has been dominated by the giant drug companies and the big insurance companies. When our health care policies are written for the insurance companies and the drug companies instead of America's families we all lose out.

Business-as-usual in health care policymaking needs to change. Too much is at stake – not only people’s health and finances, but in some cases life or death. I believe health care policy in our country needs an overhaul and we need to work together to find solutions to control costs, expand access and ensure quality.

As Minnesota’s U.S. Senator, these are my health care priorities:

• Make health care more affordable by cracking down on excessive costs. In order to make health care more affordable we need to reduce the excessive administrative waste in our health care system. With as much as 40 percent of our health care dollars being spent on paperwork and administration that money should be going to direct care not paper pushers. The health care industry needs uniform standards for electronic billing, electronic medical records and reports. Another important part of reducing the cost of health care involves rewarding health care providers for value, not volume.
• Empower Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for seniors. When the Part D program was written into law, an army of lobbyists from the pharmaceutical industry triumphed over America’s taxpayers and seniors in the halls of Congress when they secured a prohibition against government negotiation for lower prices. That prohibition is a sure prescription for inflated health care costs. We must make changes so that Medicare can negotiate the best prices for our seniors. I voted to allow this county's 44 million seniors to negotiate for Medicare drug prices. We need just a few more senators to vote for price negotiations and next time we will win that vote.
• Allow the reimportation of safe, less expensive prescription medicines from Canada. Just across the border, Canadians are paying dramatically lower prices for the same prescription drugs that Minnesotans must purchase at high prices. We need to allow individuals and wholesalers to safely re-import medications from other countries in order to reduce the costs to American consumers. This year I voted to allow for reimportation.
• Expand health care coverage for more Minnesotans and Americans, starting with children and with universal coverage as our goal. More than 45 million Americans are uninsured; 8 million of those are children. As a first step toward universal coverage, we must provide affordable health care to children. I am working in the Senate to extend coverage to more children through reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP) and to protect Medicaid from excluding our most vulnerable populations. Created in 1997 as a state-federal partnership to insure low-income children who don’t qualify for Medicaid, SCHIP has been a great success in reducing the number of children without health coverage. As a cosponsor of the Keep Children Covered Act of 2007, I’m fighting to make sure that state SCHIP programs have adequate funding for their beneficiaries. Minnesota has also been very effective in using its SCHIP dollars to extend coverage to eligible adults. States should not be penalized for successfully lowering the number of uninsured children and adults, and we must advocate maintaining state-level flexibility to expand coverage to the uninsured.
• Invest in science. In Minnesota, we believe in science. As home to world-class medical institutions like the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota, we have always been on the cutting edge of new medical frontiers. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is our Nation’s primary entity for biomedical research, and I support increased funding of the NIH so our scientists can concentrate on finding life-saving cures and not on finding money to do their research.
• Support stem cell research to seek new cures. Stem cell research promises to be the pathway for a new generation of life-saving cures, offering hope to millions of Americans and their families. I voted in favor of the bipartisan Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, which would expand the number of embryonic stem cell lines accessible to federally-funded scientists who are seeking new treatments and cures for severe medical conditions like juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, spinal cord injuries and certain types of cancer. President Bush vetoed this legislation. I will continue to fight for passage of this important legislation to support our most advanced medical research.
• End discrimination in mental health coverage. Minnesota has strong laws to protect those who need mental health services and we are proud to be a state that ensures comprehensive mental health care is available to Minnesotans. Nationally, insurance companies and HMOs continue to discriminate in limiting or denying coverage to individuals seeking treatment for mental illnesses. As a cosponsor of the bipartisan Mental Health Parity Act of 2007, I am working with my colleagues to put an end to this unjust discrimination against people with mental health care needs.
• Focus on prevention. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Our current health system does not place enough emphasis on prevention – and the result is very expensive. I am fighting for increased support of money-saving and life-saving initiatives like the Heart and Stroke Prevention Program.