Health Care

Working to provide every American with quality, affordable health care.

Nearly 40 years ago, my younger brother Richard and I were in a terrible car accident while on a camping trip in Idaho. The accident was so serious that it was initially unclear whether I would live or ever walk again. I was fortunate enough to have health care coverage and after three months in recovery, my doctors and my parents, who had temporarily moved to Idaho to be at my bedside, deemed me healthy enough to return home to Ohio.

Just over 20 years ago, my mother was suddenly diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a disease that would take her life at the far-too-young age of 58. I cannot bear to imagine how much worse her illness would have been if she had not had health insurance.

Though my family had the best care available to us at the time, these moments of crisis stiffened my resolve never to give up the struggle to ensure every American has access to quality and affordable health care. Now, more than ever, it is critical that Washington take action to provide relief to hardworking families across our nation — families who are being hit by skyrocketing health care costs, small businesses struggling with the soaring cost of health care, millions of Ohioans who don’t have the stable, affordable health coverage they need.

Health care reform is both a moral and economic imperative. For the health of our nation and the competitiveness of our businesses, we must ensure every American has access to quality, affordable health care.

• Lee believes we can’t turn around our nation’s economy without controlling exploding health care costs for families and small businesses. Health premiums have risen more than 25 percent over the last five years, and now cost a typical family more than $12,000 to purchase insurance on the open market. In fact, nearly two-thirds of all bankruptcies are caused by expensive medical bills.
• Lee has long been engaged in the fight for increased access to affordable health care for all Ohioans. Over two decades ago he championed quality hospice care and over a decade ago, he championed a Patients’ Bill of Rights that would have guaranteed patients the right to choose their doctor and bar insurance companies from making medical decisions. As Attorney General, he cracked down on Medicaid fraud, setting the record for most convictions and largest financial settlements in Ohio history.
• As he has traveled across Ohio, both as Lt. Governor, and as a candidate for U.S. Senate, Lee has listened carefully to working families and business executives, to seniors and parents of young children, to those who have good coverage and those with little or none. Based on those conversations, he recently wrote to Senators leading the efforts to draft health care reform legislation and urged them to keep the following principles in mind as they craft their bill. These are the core principles he hopes to bring to the Unites States Senate:
  
  
  • LOWERING COSTS
    Reform must hold down health care costs for families and businesses. Access to health care is meaningless if it is unaffordable. With premiums having risen by 25 percent in the last five years, Ohioans can no longer afford the care they need and our businesses can no longer afford to provide coverage and remain competitive. The devastating impact on families is evident in a recent study that found nearly two-thirds of bankruptcies were tied to health care bills. We also see the damage to our economy in the fact that the major difference in the cost of U.S. and foreign automobiles is the difference in health care costs borne by U.S. automakers.
    
    Several different strategies can help us hold down costs. By bringing all Americans into the health care system, we can lower costs for everyone. Focusing on preventive care will bring down costs by keeping Americans healthier, by treating small problems before they become big ones, and by avoiding expensive emergency room procedures. Educating the public on preventing disease and illness should be a primary tool in fighting high health care costs. By making sure we manage chronic diseases, such as diabetes, and catch life threatening illnesses such as cancer through regular screening, we can avoid expensive procedures and lower costs throughout the system. In addition, our antiquated system of paper records leads to dangerous medical errors and inefficient administration. Investing in health care information technology and electronic medical records will dramatically reduce overhead and save tens of billions of dollars across our system. We must also continue to crack down on fraud and abuse in our Medicare and Medicaid programs that lead to higher costs across the system. Whatever the cost saving strategy, however, a reform that does not hold down health care costs is no real reform at all.
  • ENSURING CHOICE
    Reform must guarantee consumers their choice of doctor and health plan. Those who like their coverage and/or their doctor should be guaranteed the right to keep them. To ensure that private insurers compete to offer the best mix of cost and coverage, there should be numerous health care choices available to Ohioans. A public health insurance option should be one of the choices available and should compete alongside private insurers, holding them accountable, providing families more choices and helping to hold down overall health care costs. Health care rationing and long waiting periods are unacceptable, and patients should be deciding their care in consultation with their doctors, not having it dictated to them by bureaucrats.
  • EXPANDING COVERAGE
    Reform must provide affordable coverage to every American. By offering options that would provide regular checkups and preventive care, we can ensure that Americans don’t have to wait to receive care until they face a medical emergency and have no other option than emergency room care and costly procedures. Families facing job losses and economic upheaval should never have to worry about their access to health care—coverage should be portable, continuing even as a worker changes jobs or is unemployed.
  • IMPROVING QUALITY OF CARE
    Reform must improve the quality of health care Americans receive. Studies show that even millions of insured Americans are receiving substandard care, including poor treatment to manage chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure. Patients need to know they and their doctor are making the decisions about what care they should receive, not bureaucrats. No longer can we allow preexisting medical conditions to be used as an excuse to deny care for those that need it. To ensure that all Americans receive the care they deserve, we must support scholarship and placement programs for nurses and doctors in underserved rural and urban communities. Innovation, research and development in the medical sciences must continue to flourish, as it has in Ohio and around this country.
  • OFFER VOLUNTARY LONG TERM CARE COVERGAGE
    Our nation is on the verge of a long term care crisis as some 60 percent of those over 65 will need at least some long-term care services during their lifetime, yet very few have made adequate preparations for themselves or family members who may become disabled, suffer from Alzheimer’s or otherwise need long term care. Most Americans wrongly believe that such care is already covered by Medicare or private insurance. Hundreds of thousands face impoverishment when they find it is not. No reform can be complete unless it offers every American the right to opt in to a voluntary long-term care insurance program funded by those who participate. It is estimated that individuals could choose to buy a lifetime benefit for just $88 per month, an investment health care reform should enable them to make.
  • NO TAX INCREASES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS
    Health care reform is critical to improving the health of our nation and the competitiveness of our businesses. But as I noted earlier, reform that does not hold down the cost Ohioans pay for health care is not reform at all.
    
    Therefore health care reform should not be paid for by raising taxes on the already-strapped middle class. Asking hardworking Ohioans mired in recession to pay higher taxes actually undermines what is for me a central goal of reform. In particular, health care benefits should not be taxed.
    
    It would of course be naive to think that reform has no cost. We must look at a wide variety of other mechanisms to provide the funds needed for reform. For example:
    
    
    • Allowing tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest Americans making more than $250,000 a year.
    • Implementing electronic medical records to save costs in administrative overhead and cut down on costly errors.
    • Cracking down on Medicare and Medicaid fraud
    • Improving preventive care to reduce costly procedures and medical emergencies.
    • Providing doctors and patients with the latest medical research they need to prescribe the most effective treatments.
    • Reforming payment systems for Medicare and other private insurance providers.