Strengthening Health Care

Rising health care costs are eating into our family budgets. While the recently passed health care reform had its flaws, it was an historic step forward. It contained critical reforms - like putting an end to discrimination against millions of Americans with “pre-existing” conditions. People born with M.S., who have a child with cancer, or pregnant women will no longer have to worry about being denied coverage. Young adults who cannot get health care through their job can now be covered through their parent’s insurance. It should be no surprise that, after taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from big insurance companies, Congressman Cravaack opposed these critical reforms. Now his only solution is to bring us back to the way things used to be – rising costs, decreasing coverage and continued discrimination.

I know first-hand the challenges of dealing with inadequate health care coverage. Our lack of family health care during my pregnancy with our oldest son Colin – and during his first few months – made it one of the scariest times in my life. Even though my husband Doug and I both worked, we did not have family coverage, and my individual insurance did not cover prenatal visits, my labor and delivery, or any care for our new son. We had to pre-pay the hospital to deliver Colin. When the nurses offered me the oxygen they believed I needed in childbirth, I batted the oxygen away because it was an extra cost and I was afraid we couldn’t afford it. No mother – and no family – should be put in this position in this country.

As an employer, I dealt with escalating health care costs while meeting payroll and a bottom line. As an attorney, I helped seniors, veterans and families get the health care they needed, often cutting through insurance red tape to help people get what they paid for. In the Legislature, I worked tirelessly with bipartisan partners to make sure that we all got what we paid for when it came to health care by reforming payments, increasing transparency, and paying for good care, not procedures.

Washington can take a page from what we’ve learned here in Minnesota, where we deliver high-quality, lower-cost care. I will work to build on recent reforms in order to lower costs, to bring down prescription costs, to focus on prevention, not procedures -- to make affordable health care accessible for all. We’ve taken important steps in reforming America’s health care system, but there’s still much left to be done. This is America – and a sick child should be able to go to the doctor.