When I was a teenager, I got a painful ear infection. We had no insurance. We had no money for a doctor's visit. Eventually, my natural immunity took over and I overcame the infection, but not before I lost partial hearing in that ear. It is amazing to me that a few dollars worth of antibiotics could have prevented permanent damage. But I got off easy.
Recently I met a 50 year old woman in Forest City. A few years ago, an insurance company denied her husband a $40,000 procedure that he needed to survive. Now she's a widow with two kids. This must end.
During the healthcare debate, President Obama met with Senator Grassley three times and called him three more times to keep in touch. In April, Senator Grassley declared, "I'm doing everything I can to make the reform effort in Congress a bipartisan one." That was then, but by August his campaign sent out a fundraising appeal stating, "The simple truth is that I am and always have been opposed to the Obama Administration's plans." That same month, he made the absurd claim that the legislation would allow the government to "pull the plug on Grandma." People are dying because they don't have health insurance. Senator Grassley should be at that table fighting to keep every one of us safe.
It's time we had health care reform that puts people first, not the big insurance companies. We must ensure people are never denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. We must stop insurance companies from cancelling policies when people get sick. We must give citizens the power to fight back when insurance companies deny life saving procedures, just to increase their profits. We must bring about greater competition to the insurance industry, to create incentives that provide better coverage, costing consumers less. We must also look for ways to cut bureaucratic red tape, by standardizing medical forms and modernizing paperwork through electronic and digital record keeping.
At this time, we don't know what the final bill will look like, but I want to tell you where I stand. There are three principle goals I want in Health Insurance Reform bill;
First: it must give access to affordable healthcare to every American.
Second: we must improve the quality of care.
Third: we must reduce costs.
Expanded coverage can be accomplished in a fiscally responsible manner. When we reverse Senator Grassley's ban on allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices for seniors, we will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the program. The Obama Administration's recent investment in electronic medical records are starting to reduce costs and more will be realized when we change payment incentives from rewarding volume and complexity to creating greater transparency of costs and quality. Iowa health care providers deliver excellent care at a low cost, and as a result, we get one of the lowest reimbursement rates in the country. This chronic inequality, which seriously disadvantages Iowans and our doctors, has not been addressed by Grassley in the 30 years he has spent in the U.S. Senate. I'll never stop fighting until we have access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
