Washington, D.C. –U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and other members of the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee (HELP) launched a probe today into the seemingly infinite space made up of questions about elevated healthcare costs and the uninsured.
Committee members called on a variety of experts to share their ideas on how to solve this growing problem at a hearing titled "What's Driving Health Care Costs and the Uninsured?".
Enzi, who is also a member of the Senate Republican Task Force on Healthcare Costs and the Uninsured, shared a few ideas of his own. Below are excerpts from his remarks. For his complete statement visit
Medical Liability
"The flaws with our current system of medical litigation go beyond rising premiums. Studies show that the likelihood and the outcomes of lawsuits and settlements bear little relation to whether the healthcare provider was at fault or whether the outcome of the procedure was avoidable – or unavoidable.
"We need to revamp our medical litigation system to ensure that the truly injured get just and timely compensation, while at the same time ensuring that the truly negligent providers are the only ones who are punished."
Technology
"Technology is our best hope for new and cost-effective treatments for some of the biggest medical challenges – not just heart disease, but cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes as well. In our haste to ensure that money is spent wisely on technology, we must take care not to stifle the development of the next wave of medical miracles."
Personal Responsibility
"The list of cost drivers I cited earlier doesn't include perhaps the biggest cost driver of all – us. The decisions we make – and don't make – about our own health play a huge role in the cost of healthcare today. Unfortunately, this factor doesn't get the attention it should.
"If we all took greater personal responsibility for modifying our unhealthy behaviors, we'd collectively do more to reduce our overall healthcare spending than any government intervention could do."
Health Savings Accounts
"Health savings accounts will allow people to design their own personalized insurance plans. People will use the money that they and their employers put in their own accounts to pay for the benefits they want, knowing that they will be protected from financial ruin in the case of a catastrophic illness. People deserve to be able to choose a lower-cost plan that gives them the freedom to balance value and cost, and HSAs will give them that choice."
One group, millions of unique needs
"There are approximately 43 million Americans without health insurance. What we don't often hear is that these 43 million Americans are uninsured for a variety of reasons.
"We can't look at uninsured Americans as one big group in need of one big solution. We need to identify those who really cannot afford to purchase health insurance, and identify some solutions that would make health insurance more affordable for them, based on their particular needs. And we need to do this in the context of reducing healthcare costs for everyone."
