Issue Position: Health Care Improvements

Issue Position

As I travel around the Third District, I find that health care seems to be at the top of everybody's list of concerns, whether young or old, rural or urban. Many areas now find themselves experiencing a shortage of health care professionals, both doctors and nurses, and health care costs continue to increase at an alarming rate.

I am pleased to say that we are working diligently to address these concerns. Congress is working to improve access to care for all Oklahomans, and working to ensure the highest possible quality of care.

Improving Access to Health Care

Many health care facilities are facing personnel shortages. For example, there is a nationwide nursing shortage, especially acute in rural areas. Less than 20 percent of registered nurses are under the age of 35, and the number of graduates from nursing programs has declined by 15 percent in recent years. To help stem this tide, Congress passed the Nurse Reinvestment Act, which puts in place expanded federal grants and training for nurses.

Additionally, many seniors are finding that doctors are no longer accepting new Medicare patients. This is because Medicare's reimbursement rates for physicians are too low. Doctors were scheduled to receive a 4.5 percent cut in 2004 and additional cut in 2005. Both of these cuts are blocked by the recently passed Medicare bill. Instead, they will receive a 1.5 percent update in 2004 and 2005. This will keep more doctors in the Medicare program overall, and higher reimbursement rates will specifically help in low-profit margin areas like rural Oklahoma, where doctors see a disproportionate share of Medicare patients. And while these reimbursement rates are targeted at Medicare beneficiaries, the positive effects will extend to all patients. In small-town Oklahoma, losing even one local doctor can be a disaster.

Ensuring Quality Care

Congress has also put into place several new programs to help providers deliver higher quality care. The House recently passed the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act, which would provide for public and private health databanks, called Patient Safety Organizations. These PSOs would receive confidential information on medical errors from hospitals, physicians, and others. They would analyze the reports and provide feedback as to why the problems arose and how the situation can be fixed. And the Prescription Drug bill calls for wider use of electronic prescribing, which will cut down on patients taking the wrong medication because of a miscommunication between their doctor and pharmacist.

Curbing Price Increases

But the highest quality of care is wasted if all Oklahomans don't have access to it. That is why we have aggressively pursued measures to reverse the trend of the past decade and bring prices down. Earlier this year, Congress passed the Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act, which would curb the runaway litigation and frivolous lawsuits that are causing insurance premiums to continually increase. The Department of Health and Human Services noted that the median malpractice jury award more than doubled from $475,000 in 1996 to $1,000,000 in 2000. Clearly, increased insurance premiums are tied to increased awards. The HEALTH Act would subject lawyers' contingency fees to a sliding scale, and would place caps on arbitrary and subjective "non-economic damages" (while still allowing unlimited economic damages for patients who have been truly harmed).

Additionally, Congress is addressing pharmaceutical prices. The recently passed Medicare bill contains revisions to the law governing the approval process for generic drugs (known as Hatch-Waxman) which will make it easier and quicker to bring these generics to market. Also, many of my constituents are interested in reimporting drugs from Canada. Although this is unsafe for individuals to do right now - a recent FDA surprise inspection of postal packages found that 88 percent of the drugs being reimported into the country were in violation of the law, mostly for being unapproved or counterfeit - the Department of Health and Human Services is studying ways to do so safely.

Perhaps the biggest innovation in improving access to care is the recently created Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). This legislation allows all health care consumers to set aside money, tax-free, to pay for health care expenses. This money can be deposited in an interest-bearing account, rolls over from year to year, and can be used to pay expenses for yourself or your family. This takes health care out of the hands of bureaucrats and insurance companies, and puts it back into the hands of ordinary people who want to make their own decisions about their own health care.

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