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This is a thread for a single issue. It's no secret here where I stand and who I support, and it's not a surprise that I believe in knowing where your candidate stands. So everyday that I can, I'll be posting a "Grown-Up Issue Thread" meant to start a civil dialog. I know where John Edwards stands on Health care, and I would like to know more about where your candidate stands on this important issue. I'm asking nicely, please no attacks here, no sniping at candidates, just information. Let's have a good dialog for the American People, and let's sort out the differences between our candidates. We have three good candidates, and all I want as a member of Democratic Underground, is to have an opportunity to learn more about all of them. I'm posting parts of Edwards Health care plan for America, with links to the rest. I'm hoping to see the same from other Duers. Feel free to compare, to analyze, but let's not attack each other. Let's have the great conversations. UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE THROUGH SHARED RESPONSIBILITY“We have to stop using words like ‘access to health care’ when we know with certainty those words mean something less than universal care. Who are you willing to leave behind without the care he needs? Which family? Which child? We need a truly universal solution, and we need it now.” -- John Edwards The time has come for a universal health care reform that covers everyone, cuts costs, and provides better care. The number of uninsured Americans has risen to 45 million. Families with insurance face rapidly rising premiums and risk losing coverage when they need it most. Individuals and small businesses often face much higher premiums and sometimes cannot get coverage at any price. Our health care system is the most expensive in the world, yet the results are often disappointing. Today, John Edwards released his plan to strengthen America’s health care system and insure all Americans by 2012. His plan is based on the principle of shared responsibility: businesses, families, and governments must each do their part to achieve universal health coverage and a better health care system for all of us. His reforms will also make health care more affordable and rational. <snip> (1) Help Doctors Deliver the Best Care. Despite having some of the best doctors, nurses, and hospitals in the world, Americans are treated appropriately in doctors’ offices only about 55 percent of the time. Nearly a third of patients seeking treatment experience medical mistakes, medication errors, or inaccurate or delayed lab results.
To help doctors, hospitals, clinics and plans to improve the quality of health care, Edwards will:
Promote Evidence-Based Medicine: Effective new treatments can take years to be widely adopted. For example, many patients do not receive beta blockers after heart attacks even though they are cheap and highly effective. Similarly, doctors sometimes prescribe name-brand drugs despite the availability of equally effective, less expensive generic drugs.
Disseminate Objective Information on Medical Advances: Edwards will establish a nonprofit or public organization – possibly within the Institute of Medicine – to research the best methods of providing care, drawing upon data from Medicare and the Health Care Markets and medical experts from across the nation.
Help Doctors Implement New Advances: Edwards will support new technologies, such as handheld devices and electronic medical records, to give doctors the latest information at their fingertips.
Improve the Health Care Delivery System: Edwards will develop partnerships among academic medical centers, Medicare, and other federal agencies to make sure high-quality medicine is practiced everywhere. Improving quality is an important key to making universal health care affordable in the long run.
Pioneer New Ways to Pay for Health Care: Our health care system is predominantly fee-forservice: providers are paid for each treatment, regardless of its necessity or quality. For example, a hospital that botches a surgery is often paid for the error and then paid again to fix it. Our system should pay doctors for results, encouraging better, more efficient care. Under Edwards’ plan,
Medicare and the Health Care Markets will lead the way, paying higher rates to plans and providers that provide the very best care, lowering premiums for high-quality plans, and penalizing plans that fail to meet critical, easily quantifiable goals such as childhood immunization rates.
Prevent Medical Errors: At least 100,000 patients die each year due to medical errors, according to the Institute of Medicine. Many other errors seriously injure patients and add to health care costs. Edwards will support public-private collaborations to reorganize patient care, improve internal communications, reduce errors through electronic prescribing, and establish basic quality benchmarks.
(2) Invest in Preventive Care and Health. Study after study shows that primary and preventive care greatly reduces future health care costs, as well as increasing patients’ health, but our health care system is focused on treating diseases, not preventing them. Insurance companies have little incentive to bear these costs. As a result, many people do not receive preventive care such as tests and immunizations. Other Americans suffer from preventable, chronic conditions that can lead to complications and disability. Edwards will help Health Care Markets lead the effort to realign incentives in the health care system that reward healthier outcomes and lower costs.
Promote Preventive Care: Health Care Markets will offer primary and preventive services at little or no cost. Incentives like lower premiums will reward individuals who schedule free physicals and enroll in healthy living programs. Edwards will also support community efforts to improve health, such as safe streets, walking and biking trails, safe and well-equipped parks, and physical education programs for children.
Improve the Treatment of Chronic Diseases: When chronic diseases are not routinely treated, they can cause emergencies that threaten patients’ health while raising costs. Health Care Markets will encourage plans to monitor patients’ health to keep them out of the emergency room. For example, plans can pay for nutritional counseling for diabetic patients to help them make healthy choices and control their blood sugar levels.
(3) Empower Patients through Transparency. Finding reliable information comparing doctors and hospitals on price and performance is harder than finding it for a new car. Edwards will create a “Consumer Reports” for health care, a universal and easy-to-use report card to help Americans evaluate hospitals’ effectiveness in treating injuries and diseases. Informed patients will make better choices and drive health care providers to offer better services for lower costs.
(4) Reduce Health Disparities. People of color are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer and less likely to receive timely and effective treatment. Children of African-American mothers are twice as likely to die within their first year. In California, low-income minority neighborhoods have one-third as many doctors, as a share of their population, than other neighborhoods do. Edwards will support medical research into disparities, reduce the pollutions and toxins that disproportionately harm communities of colors, and support translation services to address language barriers. By helping all Americans get insurance, Edwards will also address disparities in health caused by disparities in insurance.
(5) Improve Productivity with Information Technology. Health care administration costs more than $1,000 per American. It may be the fastest growing part of health care costs.
Adopt Electronic Medical Records: Many insurers and hospitals still rely on cumbersome paper systems and incompatible computer systems. The outdated “paper chase” causes tragic errors when doctors don't have access to patient information or misread handwritten charts. It creates needless administrative waste recreating and transporting medical papers, performing duplicative testing, and claiming insurance benefits. Edwards will support the implementation of health information technology while ensuring that patients’ privacy rights are protected. Savings from electronic records could be as great as $160 billion a year, according to a RAND study.
Support Local Infrastructure: Edwards will provide the resources hospitals need to implement information systems that improve patient safety and hospital efficiency. Steps include:
Adopting automated medication dispensers that can quickly and accurately fill prescriptions, freeing pharmacists to work more with patients and reducing the risk of prescription errors.
Developing systems to promote patient-doctor communication, such as email and group consultations and support groups for individuals suffering from the same disorder.
Creating computerized physician order entry to eliminate lost paperwork and illegible writing.
Developing computerized patient reminder systems to improve compliance with treatments, such as automatic phone calls home to remind patients to take needed medication to help keep them healthy and out of the hospital.
Using handheld devices to allow hospital staff to communicate results directly to physicians, instead of wasting time trying to find a doctor with urgent information.
(6) Protect Patients against Dangerous Medicines. Recent drug recalls such as Vioxx have raised concerns about drug safety. Edwards will restrict direct-to-consumer advertising for new drugs to ensure that consumers are not misled about the potential dangers of newly marketed drugs and strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to monitor new drugs after they reach the marketplace. He will also ensure that researchers evaluating medical devices and drugs are truly independent.
"So this is a smart, serious proposal. It addresses both the problem of the uninsured and the waste and inefficiency of our fragmented insurance system. And every candidate should be pressed to come up with something comparable."
Paul Krugman
The New York Times
"More than any of the presidential candidates, John Edwards has come up with a specific and plausible plan that provides for health care coverage for all Americans."
Nicholas Kristof
The New York Times
"While health care for all is now a popular slogan, Edwards is the only candidate offering a plan that would actually get to universal coverage."
-- Karen Tumulty
Time Magazine
"John Edwards has made a serious and thoughtful proposal to address the growing health care crisis. His innovative plan offers practical steps to lower the high cost of health care, improve the quality of care and provide coverage for all Americans."
-- Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (MA)
So take a look if you'd like, and feel free to comment, and ask questions. I'm no expert, I just believe in knowing your candidates platform. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a realist, so I completely expert this post to drop like a stone because it's not funny, it's not mean, and let's face it, issues aren't very glamorous. But please, let's keep this civil, and let's try to learn something together.
Much more here-
http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/health-care/
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