Responsible Health Care Reform
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Building a sustainable health care system
When it comes to health care reform, we should not just get it done, but we should get it right.
The urgency of the health care crisis in today’s economy calls for thoughtful, sustainable solutions. As one of the country’s leading health benefits companies, we have real-world, proven solutions to share. We not only know how to get health care reform done, but how to get it done right. We are currently advancing strategies to improve quality, which can help better manage costs and improve insurance coverage, and by working together with the government, employers, and providers, we can build a health care system that is accessible to all and provides quality care for those who need it most.
Take action – your voice can be heard.
Our parent company’s Health Action Network provides issue information and tools to help you communicate with your elected officials on the issues that matter to you—health care reform, health information technology, Medicare, and more.
Improving quality, helping manage costs
We believe that an essential ingredient for practical and sustainable health care reform is improving quality, which can help manage costs. There are many opportunities to improve health care in this country as we are far from having a system that provides the right care at the right place at the right time. Building on six principles, we have identified solutions that will deliver better health care while helping to reduce costs:
 | Promote evidence-based medicine; determine real-world outcomes |
| Advance health care quality by disseminating information throughout the system |
| Focus on prevention and manage chronic illness |
| Improve effective use of drug therapies to prevent and manage illness |
| Promote strategies to reduce medical errors and adverse drug events |
| Reduce costs through eliminating fraud, reducing costs related to litigation, and improving administration |
Covering the uninsured and improving coverage for all Americans
Enacting strategies to improve quality and control costs is essential to building a health care system that works for all Americans both now and in the future. While we believe improving quality and reducing costs is the key to a better system, we believe we must also get our country on a sustainable path to covering everyone.
Reforming insurance markets to better meet the needs of consumers
Health insurers must make the health insurance market work more efficiently and effectively. Additionally, we have identified ways to improve health insurance markets to better meet the needs of consumers:
| Ensure all Americans can access affordable coverage |
| Create a vibrant health insurance marketplace that facilitates competition and consumer choice and encourages insurers to create innovative products that meet the needs of consumers |
Enacting strategies to expand and finance sustainable coverage for all Americans
With 82 percent of the uninsured having family incomes less than 300 percent of the Federal Poverty Level1, even with strategies to improve quality and control costs, we believe that financing must be part of any strategy to significantly expand coverage:
| Improve and expand programs for the most needy |
| Provide a bridge to self-sufficiency through premium assistance |
| Expand the employer-based system |
| Equalize tax treatment for individuals purchasing coverage on their own |
| Increase funding for public-private partnerships |
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