Issue Position: Healthcare

Issue Position

"America has the highest-quality health care in the world. We need to build partnerships that foster cost-effective ways of extending that care wherever it's needed. And we must ensure that healthcare decisions are made by patients and providers, not by lawyers and politicians."

Governor Otter recognizes that improving affordability and access to quality healthcare is a pressing need, and that it will take government and the private sector working together collaboratively and with a common purpose to bring about real changes. Imposing a top-down, one-size-fits-all mandate on citizens and states won't reduce costs or accessibility to healthcare. It will require building public-private partnerships and addressing such specific needs as shortages of healthcare providers, incentives for preventative care, and more efficient and secure health information systems to better coordinate care. It will take fostering innovative, market-based solutions and engaging everyone -- patients and physicians, hospitals and insurers, employers and employees -- in a sustained effort to change healthcare in Idaho for the better. While the federal government was creating more entitlements, Governor Otter was working to change the culture to ensure Idahoans are the architects of their own destiny.

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