Health Care Reform is Needed

Our nation’s health care system needs reform that will result in more choices, flexibility and lower costs for consumers, and which will result in covering more of the uninsured.We spend trillions of dollars each year on health care – more than 17% of our gross domestic product (GDP).

Medical costs play a role in as many as 60% of the personal bankruptcies in the U.S.

Health care spending is growing at an unsustainable rate that outpaces the growth of wages and inflation.

Nearly 47 million Americans do not have health insurance.

Our current system rewards quantity over quality.

Health Care Reform Worth Supporting

• Reign in the growth of health care spending by improving quality and reducing inefficiency in the health care delivery system.

• Ensure that all Americans have access to an affordable private market health plan.

• Build on the strengths of the existing employer-based system, which currently insures 177 million people nationwide.

• Focus on reducing health care costs so that small businesses can afford to provide private health care coverage for employees.

• Use current funding for public health programs more efficiently.

• Enact insurance market reforms that give Americans access to private health insurance, without expanding government control of health care.

• Target federal dollars to expand private insurance coverage for low-income individuals and families.

• Allow patients to choose the health plans and providers they want.

• Limit frivolous lawsuits that drive up costs for doctors and patients and that reduce access to care.