Midlands Voices: Don’t delay health reform (by Tom White D candidate for Congress, cancer survivor)

[Omaha Steve]

Tom's web page: http://tomwhite2010.com/home


The op-ed ran in todays Omaha World Herald. Subscription required: http://omahaworldherald.ne.ussrv17.newsmemory.com/index.php?token=63771_aed24949b66ba012a3746865410f5c1d


Don’t delay health reform

BY TOM WHITE

The writer, of Omaha, is a state senator representing Dis­trict 8 in the Nebraska Legisla­ture. He is running for the 2nd Congressional District’s U.S. House seat as a Democrat.


At age 39, I was diagnosed with cancer. It upended my world and that of my wife and our two young children. I am alive today because of good doc­tors and excellent health care— the kind every American should have access to.

As a result of this experience, I am now a walking pre-existing condition.

So the current health insur­ance reform debate is deeply personal for me, and I know it is deeply personal for families across Nebraska.

We have some of the nation’s best doctors here in Nebraska, but too often access to them is denied by insurance companies, or patients postpone and some­times even forgo treatment completely because of increas­ing out-of-pocket costs and life­time limits on care.

In fact, the threat of crush­ing medical debt is all too real for too many families. Add to this the challenges that small­business owners like me face in finding affordable care for em­ployees, and the end result is an unacceptable status quo.

This year, Nebraska will face an 11 percent increase in the cost of that care — the highest rate of inflation in the nation. The urgent need for health in­surance reform is evident from conference tables in corporate boardrooms to kitchen tables in homes across Nebraska.

This is a challenge that must be met through serious discus­sion and deliberative compro­mise, not through the partisan sniping that has become all too commonplace in Washington.

As a state senator, I stuck to these principles when I pursued necessary reforms in the Leg­islature to expand insurance coverage for children and spon­sored a bill to allow 20-some­things to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans. The bill, LB 551, was passed unanimous­ly and signed into law by Gov. Dave Heineman, and it will take effect on Jan. 1, 2010.

I want to see Congress pass meaningful reform that: (1) Expands care and drives down costs for businesses and families. (2) Provides patients the freedom to choose their own doctor and health care plan without causing anyone to lose his or her current coverage.

(3) Stops insurance companies from denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition or dropping coverage when a per­son becomes sick. (4) Ensures that no bureaucrat, either in Washington or at an insurance company, ever comes between a doctor, a patient and the right treatment.

We cannot responsibly talk about reform, however, without first controlling the cost of care. The nation’s deficits are unsus­tainable now, and an expansive new program that does not relieve the pressure of rising costs is unacceptable.

Red tape, excessive and re­dundant paperwork, and physi­cians devoting valuable time to dealing with bureaucrats in­stead of treating patients all add billions of dollars in expense while healing no one. Mistakes in medical records and insur­ance fraud heap on billions more in unnecessary costs that are passed on to patients.

This can be addressed, in part, by an integrated national medi­cal record and billing system. All current drugs — no matter who prescribes them, or when and where they are prescribed — would show up in the history. With automatic prompts from the computer, adverse drug in­teractions and allergic reactions could be greatly reduced. Fraud and abuse would be curbed and health professionals could focus on treating the sick instead of pushing paper and arguing with bureaucrats.

Comprehensive health insur­ance reform cannot be delayed; our families and businesses can no longer bear the burden of our broken system. In fact, re­sponsible reform is critical to keeping American businesses competitive in a growing world economy. In light of the current economic crisis, the significance of this cannot be diminished.

To block debate on this criti­cal issue and oppose all change is to favor economic devasta­tion. That is not an acceptable result in a country whose hall­mark once was the pragmatic ability to cooperate when con­fronted by a serious crisis.

Fixing our nation’s health insurance system is a national imperative so we can improve the lives of countless Ameri­cans. Our representatives in Washington must be up to meet­ing this challenge if we expect to achieve serious and lasting reform.

[thereismore]

1. By all means, pass the HC REFORM. Not sure the Senate bill is reform at all. nt