Issue Position: Health Care

Issue Position

Controlling Costs, Guaranteeing Choice and Expanding Coverage

What's Wrong?

Despite the fact that we have the best doctors and medicines in the world, 45,000 Americans die every year because of a lack of health care. Forty-five million Americans do not have health insurance, and each day 14,000 Americans and 207 Illinoisans lose their coverage. A recent Harvard study found that of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S., 62 percent were caused by health problems --and 78 percent of those filers had insurance.
Alexi's Plan to Make it Right

Alexi believes that Congress must enact a plan that controls skyrocketing premium costs and ensures access to quality, affordable health care to all.
Every American Should Have Access To Quality, Affordable Health Care

Any bill passed by Congress should:

* Eliminate the ability of an insurance company to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition
* End hand-outs to insurance companies
* Drive down the costs of prescription drugs
* Cover preventative care and computerize health care records to reduce medical errors
* Give Americans the ability to compare plans so that they can choose the most affordable option.

Alexi supports the creation of a public health insurance option.

* Such a plan would give consumers more choice, create more competition and lower costs.
* It allows families to choose what's best for them: if they like their current insurance, they get to keep it. If they want to shop around for a better plan on an insurance exchange, they can.
* And at all times, families continue to enjoy the freedom they have to choose their own plan and doctor.
* Alexi's stance on how we pay for such needed reforms is clear: health care reform should be paid for by reducing costs and not by taxing the middle class or health care benefits.

Giving control to patients and their doctors, not to insurance companies.

* Health care decisions should be made by patients and their doctors, not insurance company bureaucrats. As long as you pay your premiums, insurance companies should not have the ability to cap benefits or deny care based on preexisting conditions.

Protecting Medicare, the program that works

* We need to protect Medicare for seniors, not maintain the giveaways for insurance companies that were passed by a Republican Congress under President Bush.

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