LIBRE’s POV on Health Care
Despite a lot of activity in Washington in recent years, it’s still hard to afford quality health care and health insurance. Access to care is still cost-prohibitive for many Americans, especially the Hispanic community. Simply put, health care remains an important challenge.
America’s health care system faces serious challenges, but current proposals to improve it incorrectly focus on universal insurance coverage rather than on improving health outcomes and excessively consolidate too many of our healthcare decisions under the authority of the Federal government. Mandating everyone purchase insurance neither secures access to quality care when they need it nor improves affordability.
Americans should be able to receive the care they need, when they need it, at competitive prices. Out-of-pocket costs should not be a barrier to receiving medical care and maintaining a healthy well-being.
To that end, health care reform should be focused on improving choice in health care, and promoting competition that gives people a range of options at competitive prices – and not just spending more taxpayer dollars to increase access to insurance that does not offer the benefits that people want. America needs to focus on expanding care, improving quality, and lowering costs for all Americans, as well as encouraging innovation that can improve the very nature of the health care system.
To improve the health care system, we need to enact targeted legislation that solves specific problems with patient-centered solutions – from expediting the approval of medicines to allowing medical professionals to practice to the full extent of their training to encouraging competition and innovation and fostering the greater implementation of current technology. These reforms will expand access to medical care, so more people have the options they need at lower costs, as well as transition health care decisions back to patients and their doctors.
The Latino community and all Americans, desperately need congress to enact policies that will strengthen the way health care is being delivered to patients. We can do this by expanding access, reducing costs, ending surprises, and reforming our safety nets to care for the most vulnerable. By reimagining health care, we can begin to move towards a system where everyone has access to the high-quality care they need, when they need it, and at a price they can afford. This means shifting toward a personalized and customizable system and away from a top down and inefficient one.