Health Care Reform

Children with acid reflux have more doctor visits and many of their mothers can't go back to work.
Health insurance reform efforts will probably affect you.

Read the bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3200

PAGER does not analyze pending legislation nor do we have time to help pass legislation. But we can give you links to organizations that have been working on behalf of children for decades.

National Family Caregivers Association:
There is a great deal of misinformation out there — much of it promulgated by opponents of healthcare reform. Don’t be fooled! While it may not be perfect, the healthcare reform legislation being proposed will significantly help families like yours — families that are coping with chronic illnesses and disabilities. It will ensure that your loved one doesn’t lose coverage because of a preexisting condition, and it will provide better coordination and lower costs, too. In addition, every major piece of reform legislation before the House and Senate includes some benefits for family caregivers. Don’t miss this opportunity to have family caregivers recognized as key players in the care of their loved ones.
http://www.thefamilycaregiver.org/press_room/detail.cfm?num=130

Genetic Alliance:
It is imperative that we engage in health reform, not just healthcare reform. In order for this transformation to be comprehensive, actionable, and sustainable, it must look at health as a continuum. Five main areas serve as the pillars of an effective health system: access, economics, delivery systems, patient empowerment, and the research to care continuum
http://www.geneticalliance.org/ws_display.asp?filter=salons.health.reform

Family Voices:
Family Voices is a national organization of families with children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN). Through our national network, we provide families with tools to make informed decisions, advocate for improved public and private health care policies, build effective partnerships between professionals and families, and serve as a trusted resource on health care.
Family Voices recommends that the following policies be part of national health care reform.

Benefits must be comprehensive, flexible and continuous to address the unique and special health care needs of these children.
Medicaid, including Early, Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT), should be preserved and strengthened given its unique and critical role in providing high-quality health care coverage for CYSHCN.
The Family Opportunity Act (FOA) Medicaid Buy-In program ("wrap around") should be strengthened by eliminating income limits and utilizing a progressive sliding scale for premiums. States should be given incentives to establish buy-in programs so that this benefit is available in every state.
Pre-existing condition exclusions should be eliminated.
There should be seamless transition without gaps in coverage in order to limit administrative burden on families when CYSHCN change insurers due to eligibility for Medicaid, changes in family employment status, etc.
Benefits must include health promotion and preventive care as recommended by Bright Futures.* These benefits are important for children with special health care needs and disabilities in order to lessen or prevent secondary disability and to promote lifelong health.

http://www.familyvoices.org/pub/general/Family%20Voices%20Health%20Care%20Reform%20Platform%20July%2015%202009.pdf

Consumer Reports:
All Americans should have access to affordable, dependable and quality health care. No family should face financial ruin to pay for care, and no family should suffer because of unsafe or poor quality care. Join Consumers Union’s work through our Prescription for Change health reform campaign, and our Safe Patient Project quality-care effort. Your voice matters when it comes to your health—use it!
http://www.consumersunion.org/health.html

Kaiser Family Foundation
Health insurance coverage is a valuable key, opening access to preventive and primary health care services, and providing peace of mind and financial security for those facing serious health care problems. Yet a growing number of Americans—45 million on-elderly in 2007—lacked insurance to help them address their health care needs. The growing uninsured population gets health care later, if at all, and ends up sicker than those who have health coverage. It is estimated that lack of health insurance alone caused as many as 27,000 unnecessary deaths in 2006.1 Leaving millions of Americans without health coverage not only compromises their health but also burdens the health care system and puts additional strain on the economy.

The bedrock of the nation’s health insurance system, employer-sponsored coverage, has been gradually eroding. Even for those who have health insurance coverage, both rising premium costs and out-of-pocket costs are increasing their financial risk and burden. For many, health insurance coverage through the workplace now has higher deductibles and more cost-sharing as well as higher premiums. Affordable health insurance and medical care are growing out-of-reach for more middle-class families, adding to the
growing numbers of uninsured.

This report focuses on health insurance coverage among those with middle incomes—its availability, affordability, and stability. It also addresses the growing burden of health care costs for middle-income families, the adequacy of today’s health insurance plans to protect them from large medical debt, and the impact of both on their ability to obtain the health care they need.
http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7951.pdf

American Nurses Association

ANA believes that health care is a basic human right (ANA, 1989; ANA, 1998). Thus, ANA reaffirms its support for a restructured health care system that ensures universal access to a standard package of essential health care services for all citizens and residents.
ANA believes that the development and implementation of health policies that reflect the six Institute of Medicine (IOM) aims (safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable) and are based on outcomes research will ultimately save money.
The system must be reshaped and redirected away from the overuse of expensive, technology-driven, acute, hospital-based services in the model we now have, to one in which a balance is struck between high-tech treatment and community-based and preventive services, with emphasis on the latter. The solution is to invert the pyramid of priorities and focus more on primary care, thus ultimately requiring less costly secondary and tertiary care.
Ultimately ANA supports a single-payer mechanism as the most desirable option for financing a reformed health care system.

http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/HealthcareandPolicyIssues/HealthSystemReform/Agenda/ANAsHealthSystemReformAgenda.aspx

American Academy of Pediatrics
Health reform provides significant opportunities to improve the health of our children and invest in our country’s future.While care for children is inexpensive, the return on an investment in child development is substantial.

Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have helped reduce the number of uninsured low-income children by one third since 1997. However, even with the additional four million children expected to receive coverage due to the 2009 CHIP reauthorization, five million infants, children, adolescents and young adults will still lack basic health care coverage. Additionally, due to rising health care costs, declines in employer-based coverage, and the economic recession, we expect to see an increase in the number of uninsured.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has adopted the following Principles on Access*:
1. Every child must have quality health insurance.
2. Quality health insurance should be a right, regardless of income, for every child, pregnant women,
their families, and ultimately all individuals.
3. All health insurance plans should have a comprehensive age appropriate benefits package directed to
the special needs of the pediatric population as recommended by the American Academy of
Pediatrics.
4. Every child should receive care in a medical home with a primary care pediatrician, and have access
to pediatric medical subspecialists, pediatric surgical specialists, pediatric mental and dental
professionals, and hospitals with appropriate pediatric expertise.
5. All health plans should have payment rates that assure that children receive all recommended and
needed services.

http://www.aap.org/advocacy/washing/AccesstoCareforAllChildren.pdf

The official government web site for health reform is www.healthreform.gov.
Read the ideas that President Obama has suggested and the actual bills that both houses of Congress are crafting based on the President's suggestions.

Check with your
doctor first!