John Kerry on Health Care Jr Senator (MA), Democratic nominee for President

Sub-sections under Health Care:
• Health Insurance
• Voting Record
• Other issues under Health Care

Flu vaccine failure means system is failing US families

BUSH: We relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for US citizens, and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was contaminated. And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country. We're working with Canada to help us [get the] vaccines necessary. My call to our fellow Americans is if you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot this year. Help us prioritize those who need to get the flu shot, the elderly and the young. I haven't gotten a flu shot, and I don't intend to because I want to make sure those who are most vulnerable get treated.

KERRY: This really underscores the problem with the American health-care system. It's not working for the American family. And it's gotten worse under President Bush over the course of the last years.

Bush has turned his back on the wellness of America

BUSH: A plan is not a litany of complaints and not to lay out programs that you can't pay for. The same plan that senators and congressmen get costs the government $7,700 per family. If every family in America signed up like the senator suggested it would cost us $5 trillion over 10 years. It's an empty promise. It's called bait and switch.

Bush blocked drugs importation and Medicare bulk purchasing

Kerry's healthcare plan lets people choose their plan

A: Two leading national news networks have both said Bush's characterization of my health-care plan is incorrect. One called it fiction. The other called it untrue. The fact is that my health-care plan, America, is very simple. It gives you the choice. I don't force you to do anything. It's not a government plan. The government doesn't require you to do anything. You choose your doctor. You choose your plan. If you don't want to take the offer of the plan that I want to put forward, you don't have do. You can keep what you have today, keep a high deductible, keep high premiums, keep a high co-pay, keep low benefits. Here's what I do: We take over Medicaid children from the states so that every child in America is covered. And in exchange, if the states want to-they're not forced to, they can choose to-they cover individuals up to 300 percent of poverty. It's their choice.

Passed 56 individual bills that I've personally written

KERRY: Once again, Bush is misleading America. I've actually passed 56 individual bills that I've personally written and, in addition to that, and not always under my name, there are amendments on certain bills. But more importantly, with respect to the question of no record, I helped write- I did write, I was one of the original authors of the early childhood health care and the expansion of health care that we did in the middle of the 1990s. And I'm very proud of that. So Bush's wrong.

Bush hasn't fully funded the VA hospitals and Medicare

BUSH: Talk about the VA: We've increased VA funding by $22 billion in the four years since I've been president. That's twice the amount that my predecessor increased VA funding. Of course we're meeting our obligation to our veterans, and the veterans know that. We're expanding veterans' health care throughout the country. We're aligning facilities where the veterans live now. Veterans are getting very good health care under my administration, and they will continue to do so during the next four years.

FactCheck: Bush's plan yields $13B for big pharma, not $139B

Kerry bases his claim on one disputed study by two Bush critics, Boston University researchers Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, who concluded that 35% of the $400 billion cost that was projected at the time-or $139 billion-would be "windfall profits" to drug companies. Their findings are contradicted by a study in March 2004 commissioned by the Pacific Research Institute, which describes itself as a "free-market think tank." They estimated drug company profits much lower-from an increase of 3.2% ($13 billion) to a possible decline of 1%. The two studies make starkly different assumptions about whether the new drug benefit will cause seniors to buy a lot more medication thereby increasing sales, and also about the extent to which competition among different drug plans will force drug companies to offer rebates and discounts to get the business.

Bush said in 2000 that re-importation from Canada was OK

Lawsuits contribute less than 1% of all healthcare costs

Choose your doctor and your healthcare plan

KERRY: My health care plan is not what Bush described. It is not a government takeover. You have choice. Choose your doctor. Choose your plan. The government has nothing to do with it. In fact, it doesn't ask you to do anything. If you don't want to take it, you don't have to. If you like your high premiums, you keep 'em. That's the way we leave it.

Bush chose a tax cut over health care

BUSH: If they're safe, they're coming. I want to remind you that it wasn't just my administration that made the decision on safety. Clinton did the sam thing because we have an obligation to protect you. Kerry's been in the US Senate 20 years. Show me one accomplishment toward Medicare that he accomplished. I've been in Washington 3-1/2 years and led the Congress to reform Medicare so our seniors have got a modern health care system.

KERRY: In 1997 we fixed Medicare, and I was one of the people involved in it. We not only fixed Medicare and took it way out into the future; we did something that you don't know how to do, we balanced the budget.

Bush has no plan to address the health care crisis

Health care is not a privilege but a right for all

Research, prevention, and wellness can reduce Medicare costs

A: You don't cut the benefits to people that you've promised. You can do things to guarantee that you keep Medicare solvent, as we've done. We did that in the US Congress. And we did it with respect to Social Security. If we had a medical care system in this country that dealt better with research, with prevention, with wellness, with the whole parameter of health care issues, we could begin to reduce the costs of Medicare

Day 1: Make health care a right, not a privilege

A: I will send to Congress a health care plan that stops spiraling costs, covers every child in America, and makes it possible for every American to get the same health care as any member of Congress. Making health care a right and not a privilege is something worth fighting for.

Don't push seniors into HMOs; change Bush Rx plan

A: I will change the benefit so that it: rewards employers who are offering retiree health benefits rather than undermining them; does not push seniors into HMOs; includes real cost containment and improves protections for low-income Americans.

Simultaneously address costs, coverage, and choice

There are four ways we can deal with healthcare problems as a country.
• First, we can confront the issues of cost, access and quality in a piecemeal way, much as we did during most of the last decade.
• Second, we could try to overwhelm the problems with a massive expansion of the federal government's role in health care.
• Third, we could choose not to institute any reforms-the position of the Bush administration.
• I offer is a fourth proposal that simultaneously addresses three challenges: bringing costs under control; offering access to affordable coverage to every American; and guaranteeing that every child in America will have health insurance coverage.

Lack of accessible health care is a disgrace

Tax cut of $550 billion would cut Medicare

FactCheck: Kerry's plan covers 95% of Americans, not 100%

FACT CHECK: Actually, his plan wouldn't cover all Americans. It would increase the percentage who have coverage from 84% currently to an estimated 92% to 95%. But several million would still be left uninsured.

Health care plan is not an empty promise and provide choice

Covering more people can lower health costs in many ways

FactCheck: Kerry's plan covers 92%, not 100% of Americans

It is morally wrong to leave so many Americans uninsured

Start providing health insurance for every child in America

Provide a bonus for states to get children insured

More help to those who fall through the cracks of the system

Save families up to $1,000 a year on their premiums

Catastrophic health coverage for all costs over $50,000

KERRY: No. My program is more ambitious, because what I would roll back Bush's tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, and create a federal fund that takes all the catastrophic cases in America out of the private system, which means, effectively, every individual in every business in America will be capped at $50,000 of risk. That will provide each American who has health care today with a $1,000 minimum reduction in their premium.

Q: Sen. Edwards, that is one of the major differences between your plan. Is that idea affordable?

EDWARDS: The issue becomes whether you believe health care is an isolated problem. For those in poverty and the struggling middle class, if one thing goes wrong-if they have a health care problem-they go right off the cliff. I mandate health care for all kids and cover the most vulnerable adults. But we also have to find ways to not only lift these families out of poverty.

Cut $350B of bureaucracy and cover 90% of Americans

We have the opportunity, if we act now, to make health care a fairly straightforward matter in the future. Here, in summary form, I my bottom line:
• All Americans will have access to the same health-care coverage that their member of Congress has today.
• A commitment to work until every American has affordable health insurance-starting with a plan that covers 99% of children and 96% of all Americans.
• Contain soaring health-care costs by making prescription drugs more affordable, getting rid of frivolous lawsuits, reducing uncompensated care, and giving patients affordable health-care choices.
• Releif to employers who offer affordable coverage to their employees by covering a portion of their highest cost cases.
• Save costs by cutting bureaucracy; that cuts nearly $350 billion a year out of the health-care system.

Cover more citizens with health plan like Congress gets

DEAN: When I came into office, Vermont had a program that insured everybody up to the age of 6 to 225% of the poverty [level]. I expanded that up to the age of 18 for 300% of the poverty [level]. That means if you live in a family that makes $54,000 a year or less in our state, everybody under the age of 18 gets coverage. In fact, Senator, about 96.4% of all our people are covered today, something which I intend to deliver to America when you all make me president.

Providing health care for kids is an ethical issue

Created catastrophic health insurance and withdrew it

Key issue: Does government control reduce cost?

Voted YES on allowing importation of Rx drugs from Canada.

Voted YES on allowing patients to sue HMOs & collect punitive damages.

Voted NO on funding GOP version of Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Voted YES on including prescription drugs under Medicare.

Voted NO on limiting self-employment health deduction.

Voted YES on increasing tobacco restrictions.

Voted NO on banning human cloning.

Voted YES on Medicare means-testing.

Voted YES on medical savings acounts.

Establish "report cards" on HMO quality of care.

Promote Universal Access and Quality in Health Care
That more than 40 million Americans lack health insurance is one of our society’s most glaring inequities. Lack of insurance jeopardizes the health of disadvantaged Americans and also imposes high costs on everyone else when the uninsured lack preventive care and get treatment from emergency rooms. Washington provides a tax subsidy for insurance for Americans who get coverage from their employers but offers nothing to workers who don’t have job-based coverage.

Markets alone cannot assure universal access to health coverage. Government should enable all low-income families to buy health insurance. Individuals must take responsibility for insuring themselves and their families whether or not they qualify for public assistance.

Finally, to help promote higher quality in health care for all Americans, we need reliable information on the quality of health care delivered by health plans and providers; a “patient’s bill of rights” that ensures access to medically necessary care; and a system in which private health plans compete on the basis of quality as well as cost.

Goals for 2010
• Reduce the number of uninsured Americans by two-thirds through tax credits, purchasing pools, and other means.
• Create a system of reliable “report cards” on the quality of care delivered by health plans and providers.

Invest funds to alleviate the nursing shortage.

• Amends Medicare to provide for nurse education training payments to qualified entities.
• Amends Medicaid to temporarily increase the matching rate for Medicaid nurse aide training and competency evaluation programs.
• Amends the Internal Revenue Code to provide for the exclusion from gross income of amounts received under the National Nursing Service Corps Scholarship Program.
• Amends the Public Health Service Act to: (1) develop and issue public service announcements that advertise and promote the nursing profession, highlight the advantages and rewards of nursing, and encourage individuals from diverse communities and backgrounds to enter the nursing profession; and (2) award grants to designated eligible educational entities in order to increase the number of nurses.
• Establishes a National Nurse Service Corps Scholarship program that provides scholarships to individuals seeking nursing education in exchange for service by such individuals in areas with nursing shortages. Authorizes appropriations.

Let states make bulk Rx purchases, and other innovations.

To: The Honorable Tommy G. Thompson, Secretary, Department of Health & Human Services

Dear Secretary Thompson:

As you know, prescription drug costs have been surging at double-digit rates for the last six years. The average annual increase 1999 through 2003 was a massive 16%, seven times the rate of general inflation.

These increases fall hardest on senior citizens and the uninsured. Their health needs are often great, and their low incomes often make these products unaffordable. They have no ability to use their combined purchasing power to negotiate reasonable prices. Taxpayers pay tens of billions of dollars for the purchase of drugs by Medicaid—an expense that could be reduced significantly if states are permitted to negotiate for the best prices from drug manufacturers.

As you know, the Supreme Court has just ruled that Maine's innovative program to reduce prescription drug costs for the uninsured and senior citizens is not a violation of the Medicaid law. As a result of this decision, Maine can use the combined buying power of Medicaid and individuals purchasing drugs on their own to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers. Twenty-nine other states supported the position taken by Maine, and there is broad interest in many states in initiating similar programs.

The Supreme Court's ruling, however, left open the possibility that if the Department of Health and Human Services makes a finding that the Maine program violates the Medicaid statute, the Department's action would be upheld by the Court. We urge you not to intervene to block Maine's program or similar statutes in other states that achieve savings for taxpayers, the elderly, and the uninsured. Such programs must be carefully implemented to assure that the poor are not denied access to needed drugs, but there is no justification for the federal government to deny states the ability to negotiate lower drug prices on behalf of their neediest citizens.

Increase funding to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

S.AMDT.281 to S.CON.RES.23: To increase the budget allocation for programs to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and to reduce the deficit.

Rated 100% by APHA, indicating a pro-public health record.

The American Public Health Association (APHA) is the oldest and largest organization of public health professionals in the world, representing more than 50,000 members from over 50 occupations of public health. APHA is concerned with a broad set of issues affecting personal and environmental health, including federal and state funding for health programs, pollution control, programs and policies related to chronic and infectious diseases, a smoke-free society, and professional education in public health.

The following ratings are based on the votes the organization considered most important; the numbers reflect the percentage of time the representative voted the organization's preferred position.

Collect data on birth defects and present to the public.

Directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to carry out programs to:
• collect and analyze, and make available data on the causes of birth defects and on the incidence and prevalence of such defects;
• operate regional centers for the conduct of applied epidemiological research on the prevention of such defects;
• provide information and education to the public on the prevention of such defects;
• collect and analyze data by gender and by racial and ethnic group9/6/2004
• collect such data from birth and death certificates, hospital records, and such other sources; and
• (3) encourage States to establish or improve programs for the collection and analysis of epidemiological data on birth defects and to make the data available.