23 - Healthcare Today and Tomorrow

Healthcare is in a crisis. We need to encourage and provide incentives to those individuals who are already in the healthcare field, especially physicians and nurses to stay in the field and to prosper in it. Various educational assistance programs should be established for both basic professional training as well as throughout a health care professional’s career. This could be done with some requirement to work in the field, especially in some underserved areas, with all or significant portions of the tuition or training forgiven.

We must make it much more difficult for the legal profession to file frivolous lawsuits against all medical practitioners. I would be supportive of legislation that would cap monetary awards or settlements. Persons right now are afraid to practice their profession for fear of lawsuits.

Our overall healthcare system needs to be more open and willing to deal with waste and inefficiency. Quality Improvement initiatives such as pay-for-performance should reward providers of excellent services, including nurses. We should reward health care practitioners at all levels for excellent performance and quality improvement efforts.

Healthcare is not a right as are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. However, government needs to do all it can to insure that options are available for all. Using all the various components of our present system along with private initiative we would have a range of options that can begin to address the uninsured and the underinsured. Healthcare is a massive concern to many people and it is straining our system. However, we individually must also take responsibility for our own health. Insurance providers should be further encouraged to tier their offerings and reduce premiums for those individuals who follow good nutritional and exercise practices and do not partake in risky behaviors or lifestyles such as drugs, alcohol, sexual promiscuity, etc. True faith-based organizations should be encouraged to assume the role they once had in providing all kinds of compassionate care. What better way to express concern for and ministry to our neighbors!

We have the potential of having an even better healthcare system. However, the system must coordinated and integrated and new initiatives must be added that will fill in the gaps in service to all the citizens. Illegal immigration must be contained, current and new laws must be enforced. illegal immigrants, like it or not, put additional stress and burden on the healthcare, educational and social service programs and providers all at the expense of those who need healthcare most among our legal citizens.

Refining our healthcare system, looking at every component and creating a blended system that integrates both private, faith-based, community-based and government into a system that offers something to everyone, but at the same time demands personal responsibility would be what I would advocate and legislate.

Building a healthcare system on the best aspects of our current system, including integrating and incorporating: a preventive medicine component, fostering personal responsibility with reduced premiums incentives, using the buying power of government programs to demand dramatic improvement in elimination of waste, fraud, duplication and inefficiency. This "new and improved" healthcare system is A Good Choice.

There are only 23 days remaining until Ohio Voters can make A Good Choice on Tuesday, May 2nd Democratic Primary!