For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 11, 2002
Fact Sheet: President Outlines Agenda for Improving Health Security in the Best Health Care System in the World
TODAY'S PRESIDENTIAL ACTION
In a speech at the Medical College of
Wisconsin, President Bush outlined a comprehensive health care agenda
that improves health security for all Americans by building on the best
features of American health care. Our health care system can provide
the best care in the world, but rising costs and loss of control to
government and health plan bureaucrats threaten to keep patients from
getting state-of-the-art care.
To create a health care system that puts
the needs of patients first, the President proposed steps
to: (1) help all Americans get affordable health care
coverage; (2) help patients get high-quality care every time; and (3)
develop new treatments to keep patients healthy and prevent
complications from diseases and strengthen the health care safety
net. The President will back up this agenda with more than
$300 billion in proposed funding.
BACKGROUND ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S HEALTH CARE AGENDA
President Bush outlined a comprehensive
vision for helping all Americans benefit from the potential of American
health care in the 21st century. The President's health care
agenda is designed to improve the accessibility, affordability and
accountability of health care for every American -- and to make sure
that American health care keeps getting better.
Ensuring Every American Can Choose
Affordable Health Care That Meets Their Needs: The President
believes that we should trust patients, working with health care
professionals, to decide which treatment is best for them. Everyone
should be able to choose a health care plan that meets their needs at a
price they can afford. When people have good choices, health
plans have to compete for their business -- which means higher quality
and better care. Many Americans enjoy access to good choices in
employer-sponsored health care plans, but many others do not have good
coverage options or are in danger of losing them. The President
proposes to address this problem through over $117 billion in
initiatives to make good health care coverage more available and
affordable:
Expanded Health Accounts: The President's
plan lifts the excessive restrictions on Medical Savings Accounts
(MSAs), by lowering the deductible requirements to levels that are
increasingly common in private health insurance plans and to allow
preventive care coverage. These changes will allow many more
Americans to set up tax-free accounts to protect themselves from high
out-of-pocket costs. The President also proposed expanding
Flexible Savings Accounts (FSAs), to allow employees to roll over as
much as $500 in unspent health care contributions to an FSA to use the
following year or to contribute to their 401(k) plan. The
budgetary cost of these proposals to help families manage their medical
costs is $14 billion over 10 years.
Association Health Plans: The President
supports legislation that would make it easier for small employers to
pool together to offer their employees better health coverage options,
like many large corporations are able to offer.
Health Credits: The President's budget
proposes $89 billion in new health credits to make private health
insurance more affordable for low- and middle-income American families
who do not have employer-subsidized insurance. The credits
would be worth up to $1000 for individuals and $3000 for families,
would be available when people need them to pay their insurance
premiums, and do not depend on taxes owed. The Administration will work
with states to give many Americans the option of using the health
credits through state-sponsored purchasing pools, to help ensure that
they too have access to a broad range of affordable coverage options.
The credits will enable 6 million Americans who would otherwise be
uninsured during a year to get coverage, and will help many more who
are struggling to pay for their own health insurance with little or no
government help. The President also supports legislation to provide
$15 billion in health credits to provide quick help for workers who
have lost their jobs during the recession. The credits would
pay 60 percent of the cost of keeping their health care coverage and
would assist over 4 million displaced workers.
Better Medicaid and State Children's
Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) : The Bush Administration
will continue to work with states and Congress to provide innovative
coverage in these important government programs, including health care
coverage options. In just the past year, the Administration
has already worked with states to expand innovative Medicaid and S-CHIP
coverage for almost 2 million more Americans.
Medicaid: The President's budget provides $350
million to continue funding Medicaid for families in transition from
welfare to work. This coverage helps to ensure that work pays for
families by preventing them from losing their health coverage when they
start jobs.
S-CHIP: The President's budget
strengthens S-CHIP by making available to states an estimated $3.2
billion in unused S-CHIP funds that otherwise will be lost. The S-CHIP
law originally required states that did not use their full S-CHIP
allotment during the previous three years to return unused funds to the
Federal Treasury. These additional matching funds will enable all
states to expand coverage to the uninsured.
Strengthening Health Care for Seniors and
the Disabled
Strengthened Medicare: In his
budget and State of the Union address, the President renewed
his commitment to provide prescription drug coverage in Medicare, based
on the framework for bipartisan legislation that he proposed in July
2001. The President's budget includes $190 billion in net additional
spending for improving Medicare. The President's framework
would give seniors better health care options, including:
Making Medicare prescription drug coverage
available to all seniors, including lower prices on all prescriptions
and protection against high out-of-pocket drug costs.
Providing a government plan with a
prescription drug benefit, better preventive coverage, and better
protection against high medical costs, with more affordable Medigap
(supplemental insurance) options.
Giving more
reliable private health care options for seniors who prefer the lower
out-of-pocket costs and innovative benefits like "disease management"
services available in such programs. Seniors who choose more
efficient plans would be able to use the savings to reduce their
Medicare premiums.
Allowing seniors to keep
the coverage that they have now, with no changes, if they prefer it.
Because the Medicare drug benefit and
other improvements will take several years to set up, President Bush
has also proposed steps to improve Medicare benefits immediately,
including:
- Implementing a Medicare-endorsed
prescription drug card program to give seniors quick access to
competitive discounts from drug manufacturers and to provide other
valuable pharmacy services, and to provide the experience needed to
implement the Medicare drug benefit effectively.
- Helping states implement comprehensive drug
coverage for low-income beneficiaries as quickly as possible. The
Federal government will pay 90 percent of the costs of comprehensive
drug coverage for beneficiaries with incomes between 100 and 150
percent of poverty -- providing comprehensive drug coverage for up to 3
million additional low-income Medicare beneficiaries who lack drug
coverage now at a cost of $8 billion over the next 3
years. This coverage would be fully integrated with the new
Medicare drug benefit when it is set up.
- Taking immediate action to make better private
health plan options available in Medicare, by correcting chronic
underpayments to Medicare's private plans. This proposal
costs approximately $4 billion over 3 years.
- Giving seniors access to two additional
Medigap (supplemental insurance) plans, with updated benefits that
provide better protection against high medical expenses and assistance
with prescription drugs at a more affordable cost than the most popular
plans.
- Long-Term Care: The President believes
that Americans who need long-term care assistance should have more
control over how they receive the care they need. The
President's budget proposes to make premium payments for long-term care
insurance fully deductible, to provide a much-needed, more flexible
alternative to 'spending down' to Medicaid. The 10-year cost
of this proposal is $20 billion.
Assistance
for Caregivers: The Bush Administration proposes an additional tax
exemption for persons who take time to care for parents or children who
need long-term assistance. The personal exemption is $3,000
in 2002, and the 10-year cost of this proposal is $3.6 billion.
Improving the Quality of Health Care
Patients' Bill Of Rights: The President
strongly supports the passage of a Patients' Bill of Rights that leaves
medical decisions in the hands of physicians, instead of insurance
companies -- and urges Congress to reconcile differences and complete
its work this year.
Prohibit Genetic
Discrimination: President Bush will work with Congress to develop fair
and reasonable legislation that will make genetic discrimination
illegal and provide protections consistent with other existing
anti-discrimination laws.
Better Information
for Patients: The Administration continues to take steps to
make better information on medical treatments and the quality of health
care providers available to the public, including new information on
nursing home quality.
Effective Privacy
Protections for Medical Records: Electronic medical records
hold the promise of improving quality of care for patients and for
giving them more control over their health information, but only with
strong medical privacy protections give patients the security and
confidence they need. The Administration is implementing new
medical privacy protections to do just that.
Effective Support to Increase Biomedical
Research and Strengthen the Health Care Safety Net:
Support for Biomedical Research: The
President's budget includes a total of $27.3 billion for the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), including the final installment of $3.9
billion that will complete the goal the doubling of the NIH
budget. This increase will allow NIH will expand its efforts
to support research to improve the prevention, detection and treatment
of diseases.
Improved Public Health Systems
to Better Protect the Public: The President's budget
includes $5.9 billion for bioterrorism preparedness, an increase of
$4.5 billion -- more than three times the 2002 base funding level. The
budget supports a variety of activities to prevent, identify and
respond to incidents of bioterrorism -- including strengthening state
and local health infrastructures, enhancing medical communications and
disease surveillance capabilities and improving specialized Federal
response capabilities. The budget also provides $1.7 billion
for NIH research into new vaccines and diagnostics and increased
security at its facilities.
Community Health
Centers: The President's budget includes $1.5 billion for CHCs, a $114
million increase that would continue the Bush Administration's
long-term strategy to add 1,200 new and expanded health center sites
over five years and serve an additional 6.1 million patients. The
increase for fiscal year 2003 will support 170 new and expanded health
centers, and provide services to a million more patients.
National Health Service Corps: Since 1970,
over 20,000 doctors, nurses, dentists, midwives, and mental health
clinicians have been placed in medically underserved communities
through the National Health Service Corps (NHSC). The
President's budget includes $191.5 million -- a $44 million increase --
to strengthen the NHSC. With the increased funding, the NHSC
will provide scholarships or loan assistance to about 1,800
professionals practicing in underserved areas - an increase of about
500 participants.
For more information on the President's initiatives please visit
www.whitehouse.gov
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