Friday, December 26, 2003

Candidate Review - Health Care - Senator John Kerry

And here's John Kerry's plan, as he presented it on December 14, 2003

"In my first 100 days as President, I'll offer America a real deal on health care that starts with cutting costs and stopping skyrocketing premiums. Make no mistake, no one in this race will fight harder than I will to cover the uninsured and get to universal coverage. But there is more to the health care problem in America than covering the uninsured. The major reason Americans don't have coverage is they can't afford it. And it's not enough to get everyone covered if the whole country is still staggering under the weight of our medical bills. . . .

Here's how we'll do it. Right now, only four out of every one thousand insurance claims deal with health care costs over $50,000. Insurance companies, however, end up spending a fifth of their expenses paying for these very few cases. If they're spending that much, you can bet everyone else's premiums are going to go up. Under my plan the government will pick up most of the tab for these expensive cases - and the premiums for middle-class families will go down.

We'll also cut the fraud and waste out of the health care system. It would be one thing if every dime of that $4,000 was being spent on making Americans healthier. It's not. A quarter of the money Americans spend on health care goes to non-medical costs like paying bills and handling paperwork. If we can have banks that use computers and technology to cut down transaction costs to just a penny, we can surely have a health care system that does the same. Our money should be going to health care, not filling out forms.
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