MileHighNews.com - Perlmutter Encourages Fight For Healthcare Reform, Joins Cause

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MileHighNews.com - Perlmutter Encourages Fight For Healthcare Reform, Joins Cause

By Jeff Francis

U.S. Congressman Ed Perlmutter, D-Lakewood, plans to forego the two weeks of vacation that usually accompany the national lawmakers' August recess to spend time in his district. During the next four weeks as he interacts with constituents, he knows what he's going to hear about: the healthcare reform debate.

"The last piece of major healthcare legislation was when Medicare was formed about 40 years ago," he said. "The system can't keep going forward like this, in my opinion. It's between the forces of the status quo, which is some Republicans and some insurance companies, and the people who want to change it."

The legislative session went into recess with multiple bills in both houses being reviewed in various committees, such as health, financial and ways and means. When the individual bills are finally fit together, there will be one version in the House and one in the Senate. Assuming those final bills pass, they would then move to the other house.

Perlmutter said he mostly likes the current form of the House bill.

"They have a couple of key pieces for me," he said. "One is that there's no discrimination based on prior illnesses. My daughter has epilepsy, so she couldn't be denied service under this. I think it's wrong for people to be denied services based on prior illnesses. It's unconstitutional."

Another point about the House bill Perlmutter likes is the much-discussed public option.

"The way it's built right now, you can have any private insurance you might want, or you can have this public option," he said. "The public option is there to keep the insurance companies honest.

"I want to see what the final draft looks like, but these parts I'd vote 'yes.'"

A key element in the upcoming debate is the mechanism to pay for the program. Perlmutter said he thinks costs could be manageably contained by eliminating "unnecessary procedures" that Perlmutter said are rampant in the current system, and instead moving toward an outcome-based schedule of tests and procedures.

He also said money would be saved by streamlining medical records and that not discriminating based on prior illnesses would significantly reduce underwriting costs.

Perlmutter said that the debate playing out across the country on healthcare reform may intensify when Congress returns from the August recess.

"This month is going to be a lot of discussion and debate," he said. "Some people will fight against it, but there will be a lot of people who want to fight for it. We'll come back in September and see how it shakes off."

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