Michael F.Bennet

Health reform will ensure that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and will over time take substantial steps to rein in out-of control health care costs. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that health reform is fully paid for, will provide coverage to more than 95 percent of Americans, lowers health care costs and reduces the deficit.

  Quality, Affordable Health Care for Coloradans - Immediate Benefits

• Changes the way health insurance companies do business to protect consumers from discriminatory practices. It also provides Coloradans with free preventive coverage and better information so they can make informed decisions about their health insurance.
• 104,110 Uninsured Coloradans with a pre-existing condition will have access to an immediate insurance program to help them avoid the kind of out-of-pocket costs that can lead to medical bankruptcy.
• Bans insurance companies from placing caps on annual and lifetime health coverage, or dropping Coloradans from coverage when they get sick.
• Premium tax credits and cost-sharing assistance will help those who need assistance, including up to 68,800 small businesses and 439,000 individuals in Colorado.
• Insurance companies will be barred from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, health status, and gender.

Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Health Care

• Strengthens the Medicare program for the 574,000 seniors in Colorado. Medicare is a sacred trust with seniors and people with disabilities. Health reform will ensure that trust is preserved. It will make Medicare a stronger, more sustainable program by cutting long term costs.
• Medicare currently reimburses health care providers on the basis of the volume of care they provide rather than the value of care. For each test, scan or procedure conducted, Medicare provides a separate payment, rewarding more tests instead of better outcomes. Health reform moves our system toward paying for quality and value and reducing costs to Colorado's seniors.
• Provides a $250 rebate for the 102,000 Medicare beneficiaries in Colorado who will hit the coverage gap or "donut hole" this year, and fills the donut hole by 2020.

Expands Health Care Access and Investments in Workforce

• Currently, 65 million Americans live in communities where they cannot easily access a primary care provider, and an additional 16,500 practitioners are required to meet their needs. Health reform will address shortages in primary care and other areas of practice by making necessary investments in our nation's health care workforce. Health reform will invest in the National Health Service Corps, a scholarship and loan repayment program to expand the health care workforce. Health reform also includes incentives for primary care practitioners and for providers to serve underserved areas.
• New health insurance exchanges will make coverage affordable and accessible for individuals and small businesses.

Prevention of Chronic Disease and Improving Public Health

• Promotes preventive health care to encourage healthy life choices and help restrain health care costs. It will eliminate co-pays and deductibles for recommended preventive care, provide individuals with the information they need to make healthy decisions, improve education on disease prevention and public health, and invest in a national prevention and public health strategy.

Transparency and Program Integrity

• Provide consumers with information about their health care, including physician ownership of hospitals, medical equipment, and nursing home ownership. It also includes provisions that will crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP and private insurance.
• Increases funding to prevent waste, fraud and abuse by $250 million.

The Role of Public Programs

• Expands eligibility for Medicaid to include all non-elderly Americans with income below 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), with substantial assistance to states for the cost of covering these individuals.

Improving Access to Innovative Medical Therapies

• Creates a brand new pathway for FDA approval of generic versions of biologic therapies. It will also provide discounted drugs at children's hospitals, cancer hospitals, and rural and underserved hospitals so that patients have access to medicines at lower cost.

Paying for Health Reform
Is fully paid for and will reduce the deficit by $143 billion in the next ten years with further reductions to the deficit in the following decade. Revenue is generated by putting downward pressure on health insurance plans to slow the skyrocketing growth in health care costs we've seen over the past several years. Health reform also collects fees from health care industries, which will benefit from the expanded coverage of hundreds of thousands of additional Coloradans.

Fixing Health Care

Over the past decade, the median family income in our country fell by $300 and health care costs increased by 80%. We cannot continue on this path. The status quo is unacceptable.

Health care reform needs to reduce health care costs for Coloradans, preserve choice of health insurance, improve access to quality, affordable care-especially for all kids and for families living in rural area - and be done in a way that does not overburden future generations with debt.

For far too long, insurance companies have held the power over patients, physicians, and nurses and patients. That needs to end. We can, and must, provide stability and a peace of mind for our patients. When reforming the system, we need to ensure that insurance companies can no longer deny you coverage for pre-existing conditions; drop coverage if you become seriously ill; set caps for when health emergencies occur; and charge you high costs for your prescription drugs and doctor's visits.

In Colorado, doctors and hospitals across the state have created models that improve patient care while reducing costs-models that we should bring to the national stage.

Here's a quick overview of legislation I've introduced and supported to make sure we achieve health care reform the right way. For a more detailed look at health care, click here.

Health Care in the News

• Wall Street Journal: Cutting Repeat Hospital Trips -- Simple Idea, Hard to Pull Off
• Denver Post: Nation studies Western Slope's low-cost, high-quality care
• Denver Business Journal: Bennet cites Colorado examples in Senate plea for health-care reform
• Grand Junction Sentinel: Transitions coaches could help patients from hospital to home
• Pueblo Chieftain: Bennet cites Pueblo in health speech
  

Videos: Pushing for Meaningful Health Care Reform

Action in the Senate

• Introduced the Medicare Care Transitions Act
• Passed deficit-neutral, bipartisan Rural Health Amendment that would direct savings in the health care system to underserved rural areas.
• Introduced the Military Family Nutrition Protection Act
  
• Co-Sponsored the National Alzheimer's Project
• Voted for the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act
  
• Voted for the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act
  
• Introduced the Healthy Schools Act
• Co-Sponsored Hunger Free Schools Act

Health Care News Releases