Barack
Obama will make health insurance affordable and
accessible to all:
The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible
health care for all Americans, builds on the existing
healthcare system, and uses existing providers,
doctors and plans to implement the plan.
Obama
will lower health care costs:
The Obama plan will lower health care costs by $2,500
for a typical family by investing in health information
technology, prevention and care coordination.
Promote
public health:
Obama and Biden will require coverage of preventive
services, including cancer screenings, and will
increase state and local preparedness for terrorist
attacks and natural disasters.
In
this Section
More
on Health Care
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your ideas
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your mind and help set the policies that will guide
this campaign and change the country. Discuss
with others.
Plan
for a Healthy America
Barack
Obama and Joe Biden's Plan
On
health care reform, the American people are too
often offered two extremes - government-run health
care with higher taxes or letting the insurance
companies operate without rules. Barack Obama and
Joe Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong,
and that’s why they’ve proposed a plan that strengthens
employer coverage, makes insurance companies accountable
and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without
government interference.
The
Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible
health care for all Americans, builds on the existing
health care system, and uses existing providers,
doctors and plans to implement the plan. Under the
Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make
health care decisions with their doctors, instead
of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.
Under
the plan, if you like your current health insurance,
nothing changes, except your costs will go down
by as much as $2,500 per year.
If
you don’t have health insurance, you will have a
choice of new, affordable health insurance options.
Make Health Insurance Work for People and Businesses
- Not Just Insurance and Drug Companies.
- Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing
conditions so all Americans regardless of their
health status or history can get comprehensive
benefits at fair and stable premiums.
- Create a new Small Business Health Tax Credit
to help small businesses provide affordable health
insurance to their employees.
- Lower costs for businesses by covering a portion
of the catastrophic health costs they pay in return
for lower premiums for employees.
- Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for
their malpractice insurance and invest in proven
strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.
- Make employer contributions more fair by requiring
large employers that do not offer coverage or
make a meaningful contribution to the cost of
quality health coverage for their employees to
contribute a percentage of payroll toward the
costs of their employees health care.
- Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange
with a range of private insurance options as well
as a new public plan based on benefits available
to members of Congress that will allow individuals
and small businesses to buy affordable health
coverage.
- Ensure everyone who needs it will receive a
tax credit for their premiums.
Reduce Costs and Save a Typical American Family
up to $2,500 as reforms phase in:
- Lower
drug costs by allowing the importation of safe
medicines from other developed countries, increasing
the use of generic drugs in public programs and
taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic
medicines from the market
- Require
hospitals to collect and report health care cost
and quality data
- Reduce
the costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers
and their employees.
- Reform
the insurance market to increase competition by
taking on anticompetitive activity that drives
up prices without improving quality of care.
The
Obama-Biden plan will promote public health.
It will require coverage of preventive services,
including cancer screenings, and increase state
and local preparedness for terrorist attacks and
natural disasters.
A
Commitment to Fiscal Responsibility:
Barack Obama will pay for his $50 - $65 billion
health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush
tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000
per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009
level.
