One of the biggest drains on American pocketbooks is the high cost of health care. Many families are one illness or accident away from financial ruin. Health insurance costs reduce workers’ take-home pay to a degree that is both underappreciated and unnecessarily large. At the same time, health care costs are consuming a growing share of federal and state government budgets. The United States spends over $2.2 trillion on health care each year—almost $8,000 per person. That number represents approximately 16 percent of the total economy and is growing rapidly. If we do not act soon, by 2017, almost 20 percent of the economy—more than $4 trillion—will be spent on health care.
At the same time that we strive to contain costs, we cannot stand by as tens of millions of Americans lack health care coverage. An unhealthy workforce leads to an unhealthy economy, and moving to provide all Americans with health insurance is not only a moral imperative, but it is also essential to a more effective and efficient health care system.
For too long, we have recognized the problems with health care, but have not taken responsibility for them. We can no longer afford to wait. That is why the President has already begun the process of reforming health care by:
- Instituting Temporary Provisions to Make Health Care Coverage More Affordable for Americans Who Have Lost Their Jobs. As part of the Recovery Act of 2009, the Administration will provide Americans who lose their jobs or have recently lost their jobs a tax credit to keep their health insurance through COBRA. These steps are estimated by the Joint Committee on Taxation to help provide coverage for approximately seven million Americans.
- Increasing Health Care Coverage for Children. In one of his first official acts, the President signed into law the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)— bipartisan legislation vetoed twice by the previous President. It provides the support, options, and incentives for States to provide coverage for an additional four million children on average in CHIP and Medicaid who are now uninsured by FY 2013. The President is committed to implementing this law quickly and aggressively to help families whose children are at risk of losing coverage in this weak economy.
- Computerizing America’s Health Records in Five Years. The current, paper-based medical records system that relies on patients’ memory and reporting of their medical history is prone to error, time-consuming, costly, and wasteful. With rigorous privacy standards in place to protect sensitive medical record, we will embark on an effort to computerize all Americans’ health records in five years. This effort will help prevent medical errors, and improve health care quality, and is a necessary step in starting to modernize the American health care system and reduce health care costs.
- Developing and Disseminating Information on Effective Medical Interventions. Medicine is changing so rapidly it is almost impossible for any individual physician to keep abreast of all the latest research studies. Without the most recent information on effective treatments, it is increasingly more difficult for a doctor to give a patient the type of individualized treatment he or she deserves. To help physicians get the information they need to provide the highest quality care for patients, the Recovery Act of 2009 devotes $1.1 billion to comparative effectiveness research—the reviews of evidence on competing medical interventions and new head-to-head trials. The information from this research will improve the performance of the U.S. health care system.
- Investing in Prevention and Wellness. Over a third of all illness is the result of poor diet, lack of exercise, and smoking. Indeed, obesity alone leads to many expensive, chronic conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. Furthermore, there are important vaccines that can prevent diseases, and screening tests that can detect cancer and other diseases at an early stage when they are more curable. Yet many Americans are not getting these effective treatments. The President has devoted in the Recovery Act an unprecedented $1 billion for prevention and wellness interventions. This will dramatically expand community-based interventions proven to reduce chronic diseases.
