Here is Senator Lieberman's response to my letter to him regarding health care reform. I personally interpret "ecreasing the costs of insurance" as eliminating the exemption from the Anti-trust laws. Let's hope we can create a true free market system for health care.
June 4, 2009
Dear Mr. Coman:
Thank you for contacting me to express your desire to improve our nation's health care system. I share your concern that this must be a top national priority, and I am committed to addressing this critical issue. I understand that Americans today are faced with greater uncertainty than ever before when it comes to their health needs. These concerns often focus around rising medical costs, aging, the risk of disease, and the multitude of treatments. In Connecticut, 325,000 residents - 50,000 of whom are children - are uninsured.
Throughout my career in public service, I have fought to make the nation's health care system work better for all Americans. I have concentrated on decreasing the costs of insurance, expanding access to treatment, assuring the best health care workforce has the newest medical technology, and protecting the rights of patients and consumers through their interactions with our cumbersome system.
It is especially important that we work to strengthen health care delivery systems for the uninsured, while also providing affordable, quality health care coverage for everyone.
Unfortunately, individuals and families without health coverage are more likely than those with coverage to forego needed health care, which often leads to worse health outcomes and the need for expensive medical treatment. Lack of insurance can lead to health care access problems affecting whole communities, such as overcrowding in emergency rooms. The nation as a whole is burdened through increased taxes to pay for the uncompensated care of uninsured persons.
On November 21, 2008, I sent a letter, along with several of my colleagues, to President-Elect Obama, in which we indicated our commitment to working with him in a bipartisan fashion to reform our health care system. Given our current economic challenges, and the fact that a growing number of Americans have lost their jobs and subsequently their health care benefits, we urged that the Congress and the White House immediately work together to tackle the challenges of health care costs and coverage. In the letter we outlined principles for reforming our nation's health care system. These include: ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage; making health care coverage both affordable and portable; implementing strong private insurance market reforms so that insurers can compete on price, benefits, and quality; modernizing federal tax rules for health coverage; promoting improved disease prevention and wellness activities, as well as better management of chronic illnesses; making health care prices and choices more transparent so that consumers and providers can make the best choices for their health needs and health care dollars; and improving the quality and value of health care services. I look forward to working with the new Administration to enact legislation that accomplishes these principles. I am pleased that President Obama conducted the first White House Forum on Health Reform on March 5, 2009, in which a broad group of doctors, patients, business owners, insurers, and lawmakers, among other interested stakeholders, met to discuss and advance ways to reduce costs, expand coverage, and improve quality.
On February 5, 2009, along with 12 cosponsors, I reintroduced sweeping bipartisan legislation that would guarantee every citizen affordable health insurance, regardless of income, and significantly improve access to quality medical treatments. The Healthy Americans Act (S. 391) would comprehensively reform the health care system by providing universal coverage through a centrally financed system of private health insurance. This fiscally responsible legislation reverses the current trend in health care costs and provides much-needed relief for families and businesses. Under the plan, comprehensive coverage policies would be available through regional markets, harnessing the power of competition and providing individuals with greater choice and better value. Insurance companies would be required to offer a generous benefits package, similar to what federal employees receive. Coverage could not be denied; and insurance companies could not charge higher premiums because of a person's health status, occupation, gender, genetic information, or age. It would also implement a standard health care tax deduction and a system of subsidies in order to guarantee that all Americans can afford quality health coverage.
Last Congress, I took a first step to expanding coverage by cosponsoring legislation to provide more affordable health care to the millions of Americans working for small businesses. Over 45 million people in the United States had no health insurance in 2007. Among the non-elderly uninsured, more than half of these individuals were in families with a full-time worker and employed by, or with family members employed by, a small business with fewer than 100 employees.
On September 24, 2008, I became the lead cosponsor of the Affordable Coverage for Small Employers Act. This bipartisan bill would increase access to high-quality and affordable health care for our nation's small business owners, their employees, and their families by removing barriers to health care coverage faced by small business owners. This legislation would partner the federal government with states and small businesses to create regional health care pools that would allow for more competition in the small group market. It would offer more health insurance options to small business owners so they can pick the health care coverage that best fits their needs. It would also provide a framework for extending coverage to all Americans. The benefit packages available through this plan mirror the health care benefits available to Members of Congress and other federal employees. In addition, the bill provides advanceable, refundable tax credits to working families to help offset the cost of health coverage, as well as tax credits to small employers who contribute to their employees' health insurance premiums.
Over my career, I have focused on making sure high-quality health care was available to those in the greatest need. In both the 108th and 109th Congresses, I introduced the FairCare Act to ensure that all Americans receive the same quality of medical care regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity. That measure would have set medical standards of care for diseases that doctors should follow for each and every patient, rewarding health professionals for practicing these standards, and increasing transparency of health care practices by creating the conditions for an electronic health record that can be analyzed for the quality of care received. By improving the quality of care in this country, we can save approximately $30 billion a year. More importantly, we can reduce suffering and save lives.
I support legislative initiatives to protect the rights and benefits of patients who are enrolled in managed care and other types of health care plans; and I have been involved in efforts to craft a bipartisan managed care reform bill that can be enacted by the Congress. We must ensure that all Americans have decent health care plans with essential patient protections, such as guaranteed access to needed health care specialists; access to emergency room services when and where the need arises; continuity of care protections to assure patient care if a patient's health care provider is dropped; access to a timely internal and independent external appeals process with a medical necessity standard; assurance that doctors and patients can openly discuss treatment options; and an enforcement mechanism that ensures appropriate recourse for patients who have been harmed as a result of health plan actions and that holds health plans accountable for decisions that result in patient injury or death.
We must also update our health care system's infrastructure by expanding the use of health information technology (IT) in our country. Widespread adoption of health IT would save the system money and increase the quality of care delivered. Improving the quality of care delivered to Americans is dependent on decreasing medical errors and limiting wasteful spending on clinical procedures that fail to improve health outcomes. I am paying close attention to legislative initiatives to expand pay-for-performance to Medicare, which would result in payments to physicians based on delivering high-quality care to their patients. These efforts must be comprehensive, well funded, and thoughtful to ensure that positive impacts are experienced by every American.
Expanding access to health care for Americans will involve safeguarding the successful Medicare and Medicaid programs and improving the quality of medical care in our country which can make our health care systems more effective and efficient. I will continue to fight against cuts to clinically proven programs and reimbursement reductions for our high-quality hospitals and providers serving those on Medicare and Medicaid.
Finally, in addition to providing greater access to life-saving treatments, we need to invest in the development of new treatments. During the 110th Congress, I reintroduced my Accelerating Cures Act legislation, which would accelerate the pace of biomedical research so that we can advance the study and development of therapies that can more effectively treat and even solve diseases, such as cancer, Parkinson's disease, heart failure, and diabetes. The sole mission of this legislation is to translate basic science discovery, such as that produced by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), into novel diagnostics, therapies, and life-altering cures. Some examples of what this proposal would do are to create new opportunities for: increasing collaboration between traditionally separate disciplines and between the public and private sectors; funding high-risk, high reward research that could result in new treatments for diseases quickly; and making funding available to small companies that are doing breakthrough medical work but often do not have the resources to bring their products to market. Many life-threatening and chronic diseases would undoubtedly benefit from passage of such legislation. I also support expanding stem cell research in the hope of realizing lifesaving treatments for many diseases, along with increased funding for more coordinated efforts to combat autism and other developmental disorders.
As the Senate focuses renewed attention on health care quality, affordability, accessibility, and related matters in this 111th Congress and beyond, you can be assured that I will keep in mind your specific thoughts and suggestions; and I will continue to be an advocate for strong patient protections, health care plan accountability, and affordability to benefit all of our nation's citizens.
Thank you again for sharing your views and concerns with me. I hope you will continue to visit my website at http://lieberman.senate.gov for updated news about my work on behalf of Connecticut and the nation. Please contact me if you have any additional questions or comments about our work in Congress.
Sincerely,
Joseph I. Lieberman
UNITED STATES SENATOR
JIL:vdh
June 4, 2009
Dear Mr. Coman:
Thank you for contacting me to express your desire to improve our nation's health care system. I share your concern that this must be a top national priority, and I am committed to addressing this critical issue. I understand that Americans today are faced with greater uncertainty than ever before when it comes to their health needs. These concerns often focus around rising medical costs, aging, the risk of disease, and the multitude of treatments. In Connecticut, 325,000 residents - 50,000 of whom are children - are uninsured.
Throughout my career in public service, I have fought to make the nation's health care system work better for all Americans. I have concentrated on decreasing the costs of insurance, expanding access to treatment, assuring the best health care workforce has the newest medical technology, and protecting the rights of patients and consumers through their interactions with our cumbersome system.
It is especially important that we work to strengthen health care delivery systems for the uninsured, while also providing affordable, quality health care coverage for everyone.
Unfortunately, individuals and families without health coverage are more likely than those with coverage to forego needed health care, which often leads to worse health outcomes and the need for expensive medical treatment. Lack of insurance can lead to health care access problems affecting whole communities, such as overcrowding in emergency rooms. The nation as a whole is burdened through increased taxes to pay for the uncompensated care of uninsured persons.
On November 21, 2008, I sent a letter, along with several of my colleagues, to President-Elect Obama, in which we indicated our commitment to working with him in a bipartisan fashion to reform our health care system. Given our current economic challenges, and the fact that a growing number of Americans have lost their jobs and subsequently their health care benefits, we urged that the Congress and the White House immediately work together to tackle the challenges of health care costs and coverage. In the letter we outlined principles for reforming our nation's health care system. These include: ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage; making health care coverage both affordable and portable; implementing strong private insurance market reforms so that insurers can compete on price, benefits, and quality; modernizing federal tax rules for health coverage; promoting improved disease prevention and wellness activities, as well as better management of chronic illnesses; making health care prices and choices more transparent so that consumers and providers can make the best choices for their health needs and health care dollars; and improving the quality and value of health care services. I look forward to working with the new Administration to enact legislation that accomplishes these principles. I am pleased that President Obama conducted the first White House Forum on Health Reform on March 5, 2009, in which a broad group of doctors, patients, business owners, insurers, and lawmakers, among other interested stakeholders, met to discuss and advance ways to reduce costs, expand coverage, and improve quality.
On February 5, 2009, along with 12 cosponsors, I reintroduced sweeping bipartisan legislation that would guarantee every citizen affordable health insurance, regardless of income, and significantly improve access to quality medical treatments. The Healthy Americans Act (S. 391) would comprehensively reform the health care system by providing universal coverage through a centrally financed system of private health insurance. This fiscally responsible legislation reverses the current trend in health care costs and provides much-needed relief for families and businesses. Under the plan, comprehensive coverage policies would be available through regional markets, harnessing the power of competition and providing individuals with greater choice and better value. Insurance companies would be required to offer a generous benefits package, similar to what federal employees receive. Coverage could not be denied; and insurance companies could not charge higher premiums because of a person's health status, occupation, gender, genetic information, or age. It would also implement a standard health care tax deduction and a system of subsidies in order to guarantee that all Americans can afford quality health coverage.
Last Congress, I took a first step to expanding coverage by cosponsoring legislation to provide more affordable health care to the millions of Americans working for small businesses. Over 45 million people in the United States had no health insurance in 2007. Among the non-elderly uninsured, more than half of these individuals were in families with a full-time worker and employed by, or with family members employed by, a small business with fewer than 100 employees.
On September 24, 2008, I became the lead cosponsor of the Affordable Coverage for Small Employers Act. This bipartisan bill would increase access to high-quality and affordable health care for our nation's small business owners, their employees, and their families by removing barriers to health care coverage faced by small business owners. This legislation would partner the federal government with states and small businesses to create regional health care pools that would allow for more competition in the small group market. It would offer more health insurance options to small business owners so they can pick the health care coverage that best fits their needs. It would also provide a framework for extending coverage to all Americans. The benefit packages available through this plan mirror the health care benefits available to Members of Congress and other federal employees. In addition, the bill provides advanceable, refundable tax credits to working families to help offset the cost of health coverage, as well as tax credits to small employers who contribute to their employees' health insurance premiums.
Over my career, I have focused on making sure high-quality health care was available to those in the greatest need. In both the 108th and 109th Congresses, I introduced the FairCare Act to ensure that all Americans receive the same quality of medical care regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity. That measure would have set medical standards of care for diseases that doctors should follow for each and every patient, rewarding health professionals for practicing these standards, and increasing transparency of health care practices by creating the conditions for an electronic health record that can be analyzed for the quality of care received. By improving the quality of care in this country, we can save approximately $30 billion a year. More importantly, we can reduce suffering and save lives.
I support legislative initiatives to protect the rights and benefits of patients who are enrolled in managed care and other types of health care plans; and I have been involved in efforts to craft a bipartisan managed care reform bill that can be enacted by the Congress. We must ensure that all Americans have decent health care plans with essential patient protections, such as guaranteed access to needed health care specialists; access to emergency room services when and where the need arises; continuity of care protections to assure patient care if a patient's health care provider is dropped; access to a timely internal and independent external appeals process with a medical necessity standard; assurance that doctors and patients can openly discuss treatment options; and an enforcement mechanism that ensures appropriate recourse for patients who have been harmed as a result of health plan actions and that holds health plans accountable for decisions that result in patient injury or death.
We must also update our health care system's infrastructure by expanding the use of health information technology (IT) in our country. Widespread adoption of health IT would save the system money and increase the quality of care delivered. Improving the quality of care delivered to Americans is dependent on decreasing medical errors and limiting wasteful spending on clinical procedures that fail to improve health outcomes. I am paying close attention to legislative initiatives to expand pay-for-performance to Medicare, which would result in payments to physicians based on delivering high-quality care to their patients. These efforts must be comprehensive, well funded, and thoughtful to ensure that positive impacts are experienced by every American.
Expanding access to health care for Americans will involve safeguarding the successful Medicare and Medicaid programs and improving the quality of medical care in our country which can make our health care systems more effective and efficient. I will continue to fight against cuts to clinically proven programs and reimbursement reductions for our high-quality hospitals and providers serving those on Medicare and Medicaid.
Finally, in addition to providing greater access to life-saving treatments, we need to invest in the development of new treatments. During the 110th Congress, I reintroduced my Accelerating Cures Act legislation, which would accelerate the pace of biomedical research so that we can advance the study and development of therapies that can more effectively treat and even solve diseases, such as cancer, Parkinson's disease, heart failure, and diabetes. The sole mission of this legislation is to translate basic science discovery, such as that produced by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), into novel diagnostics, therapies, and life-altering cures. Some examples of what this proposal would do are to create new opportunities for: increasing collaboration between traditionally separate disciplines and between the public and private sectors; funding high-risk, high reward research that could result in new treatments for diseases quickly; and making funding available to small companies that are doing breakthrough medical work but often do not have the resources to bring their products to market. Many life-threatening and chronic diseases would undoubtedly benefit from passage of such legislation. I also support expanding stem cell research in the hope of realizing lifesaving treatments for many diseases, along with increased funding for more coordinated efforts to combat autism and other developmental disorders.
As the Senate focuses renewed attention on health care quality, affordability, accessibility, and related matters in this 111th Congress and beyond, you can be assured that I will keep in mind your specific thoughts and suggestions; and I will continue to be an advocate for strong patient protections, health care plan accountability, and affordability to benefit all of our nation's citizens.
Thank you again for sharing your views and concerns with me. I hope you will continue to visit my website at http://lieberman.senate.gov for updated news about my work on behalf of Connecticut and the nation. Please contact me if you have any additional questions or comments about our work in Congress.
Sincerely,
Joseph I. Lieberman
UNITED STATES SENATOR
JIL:vdh
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