Issue Position: Health Care

Issue Position

Bill Owens is committed to health care reform. He understands that we need reform for the millions of Americans who don't have affordable health care, as well as for those who have inadequate care or live in fear that their coverage may not be there when they really need it. As a Member of Congress, Bill Owens will fight for health care reform that responsibly fixes our broken system for us and for future generations.

Bill Owens supports health care reform that accomplishes these goals:

· Supports: Controlling health care costs for the middle class.

· Supports: Providing access to affordable health insurance for every American.

· Supports: Preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to anybody based on previous existing conditions and bans caps on lifetime coverage.

· Supports: Giving small business and individuals access to the lowest rates available to federal employees and large corporations.

· Supports: Allowing anybody to keep their existing coverage.

· Supports: Using profits from repayment of TARP funds, allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, increased efficiency in our health care system (like putting all health care records on-line and requiring insurance companies to accept payment on-line), and cutting special interest tax loopholes (like tax benefits for companies that offshore jobs) to help pay for health care reform.

· Supports: Allowing states to use savings from elimination of uncompensated care costs (Over $100 billion annually) to reduce taxes. In New York this would help prevent property tax increases.

Bill Owens is opposed to:

· Opposes: Medicare benefit cuts. We can all agree that there are inefficiencies and waste in the system, but any savings should be used to strengthen Medicare.

· Opposes: Taxing health care benefits.

· Opposes: Increasing taxes on the middle class in any way.

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