We need health care that provides personal control over a system that maintains quality and affordability for all Americans. 

Government's role in our country's healthcare system should be that of watchdog and policy-maker with the responsibility to reduce costs and increase the numbers of insured Americans.   That includes reducing expensive bureaucratic redundancy, eliminating waste, rewarding prevention and bargaining for the American healthcare consumer, rather than buckling under to lobbyists and special interests.

American ingenuity can find solutions that offer quality, affordability, choice and fairness for those who work hard, pay taxes, and play by the rules.   

Per capita health care costs are growing at a rate of twice that of national income.   Over half of U.S. bankruptcies are caused by medical expenses.  In most of these bankruptcies, people had insurance.  A chance accident or illness should not wipe out a hard-working family.  And, American businesses have to add cost to products to cover increasing employee healthcare costs, thereby making us less competitive.

We've let our health care costs spiral out of control in this country to the point that those costs threaten our economy as well as the security of millions of working people.  Under the current system, many hard-working middle class people are finding it increasingly difficult to afford quality health care they can count on for themselves and their families. 

We are also at a huge competitive disadvantage in competing with foreign countries because of our bloated healthcare costs.  This in turn hurts job growth.   Healthcare costs hurt state government as well, which pays 50% of the US healthcare costs.

For the long term health of our country, and to reduce health care costs short and long term, we should:

• Revamp the system to reward prevention and health rather than illness, and require basic preventive treatments to be insured. Paying for diabetic shoes makes more sense than paying for amputations.
• Reward doctors and hospitals for doing the right thing and not just doing it right. Too many tests are ordered to pay for redundant hospital machines; too many treatment protocols are based on profitability rather than efficacy.
• Remove the insurance industry from the decision making process and let them be third party administrators.
• Reform anti-trust laws to prevent insurers from over-charging physicians for medical mal-practice insurance.
• Standardize all insurance forms and reduce expensive bureaucratic costs. As much as 30% of healthcare costs are administrative.
• Move to electronic billing.
• Gradually computerize records with computers able to talk to one another. Our healthcare records are only 28% computerized compared to England at 79% and Australia at 98%. We can do better.
• Disallow exclusions for "pre-existing conditions."
• Provide Federal tax incentives for hospitals and physicians to share machines, technologies and facilities which currently increase costs through competitive redundancy.
• Allow the US Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower drug costs with pharmaceutical manufacturers.
• Allow dependent children 24 and under to remain on their parents' policies when available.
• Insure all children 18 and under under SCHIP in families making 300% of poverty level.
• Make insurance portable from job to job.
• Increase government funds for basic research then let private companies spend to bring new solutions to market.

Bottom line, we must reduce the costs of healthcare to a level where we can guarantee access for every working American, but through the private sector in a way that allows people to choose their own doctor.

It is so important that we take personal responsibility for doing what we can to stay healthy. Our system must operate under the standard of doing the right thing, for the right patient, at the right time for the right price. In other words let's put health, not profit, back at the center of our health care system.