Sunday, June 21, 2009

Schwartz on Health Care

Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz had an op-ed piece on health care in today's Inquirer. "Fixing health care" is online. Here is an excerpt:

As President Obama has said, if you have coverage, and you like it, you can keep it. This means work-based coverage for most Americans, Medicare for seniors, Medicaid for our poorest and sickest, and continued benefits for veterans.

For the nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, many of whom are working families, we will help you buy either private or public coverage. While everyone will have to pay part of their premiums, partial subsidies on a sliding scale will be established and can be used to buy either private or public insurance.

To ensure affordable, meaningful coverage, we will change the ground rules in the insurance market. Denying coverage or charging more for preexisting conditions, health status, or sex is going to stop. Insurers will have to simplify terms and procedures. And, we expect insurers to pass those savings along to their consumers.

4 comments:

Austin in PA said...

That "uniquely American solution" is great language - it directly attacks the meme of "French - style socialized medicine". Very nice statement.

AboveAvgJane said...

Austin! Nice to hear from you and hope all is well.

I agree -- it is a well-written statement. Health care has been a topic of particular interest to her since her state senate days and I'm glad to see her playing a lead role in federal legislation.

Takao Yamada said...

I'm just glad to see the government finally moving ahead on health care reform. For all the claims about competition and socialized medicine it's nice to see people moving past the buzzwords and actually fixing a real problem that Americans are worried about.

There's a great collection of polling data on Americans and health care found at http://www.researchamerica.org/public_opinion

Keep up the great work on the blog

AboveAvgJane said...

thank you!