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. Obamacare's imposition of top-down, one-size-fits-all mandates on citizens and states isn't reducing costs or accessibility to healthcare. Real change will require building market-driven 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, outcomes-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 is busy creating more mandates and entitlements, Governor Otter is working to change the culture to ensure Idahoans are the architects of their own destiny. While Idaho's state-based health insurance exchange is not a perfect solution, under the constraints of Obamacare it at least helps ensure our voice and our values are reflected in how this federal requirement on our citizens is managed here in Idaho.

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