Look for areas of agreement on health care

Did you know that Idaho orthopedic surgeons pay half the malpractice insurance as do their counterparts in Pennsylvania, thanks to our state’s tort-reform law?

Did you know that many Idaho businesses have dropped health insurance altogether, due to the cost, and are now offering high deductible health-savings accounts or no insurance at all?

Did you know that many Idaho doctors who practice specialty medicine are strong advocates for increased preventative and general care?

I didn’t know those things before I came home from Washington, D.C., at the beginning of this month, but I know them now.

During the six weeks I was home traveling to all 19 counties in my district, I met many of you and have heard your stories about the need for improving our health-insurance system.

There was the woman whose daughter fought leukemia and won, only to be denied insurance later on because she had been ill in the past.

There was the man who was injured while working on his dairy farm, and who now cannot get health insurance at all because the pins in his shoulder are defined as a “pre-existing condition.”

There are the over-burdened, low income clinics, overwhelmed and understaffed, which must deal day after day with an increasing flood of patients who no longer have health insurance and who cannot afford to pay to visit a doctor..

There was the businessman who told of offering health insurance to his employees, only to have his youngest workers turn it down and ask for raises instead.

And there was the self-employed contractor who now cannot afford to buy insurance for himself and his family, and who worries every day that even a minor accident could bankrupt his business and cost him his home.

I have learned, I have heard your stories, and I will do what I can to incorporate their lessons into the health care proposals Congress is considering this fall. But what I knew before also continues to hold true: The vast majority of Idahoans want improvements to the health-insurance system.

While there has been much debate over the health-insurance reforms where people differ, I continue to be struck by the areas where almost all Idahoans agree:

-    We want any reforms to be fiscally sound, and to leave our country in a stronger fiscal position for having adopted those reforms.
-    We want affordable insurance to be available to all Americans without regard to where we work, our age or the current state of our health.
-    We want to see changes made that reduce the skyrocketing costs in our health-care system and drive up our premiums.
-    We want more access to preventative care, and more health-care professionals in rural communities.
-    We want to choose our own doctors and remain free to make our own health care decisions.

Finally, Idahoans want accountability – from insurance companies to make sure those companies provide basic, reliable coverage at stable costs. And we want more accountability from the federal government, to make sure every nickel we spend is spent wisely.

Both items are critical, and are among the reasons I continue to oppose a new taxpayer funded and government-run insurance company. I have come under heavy fire for this stance in Washington and even here in Idaho, but I believe there is a path forward.

If we allow small businesses and individuals to band together and create large, new pools of those needing insurance, they can negotiate with insurance companies and drive the kinds of hard bargains which lead to reduce premiums, more efficient service and a lot more customer choice.

It’s a solution, and there are many such solutions that would help us achieve meaningful reform, including several put forth by the president in his address to the nation. Yet while Idahoans I have met with are always respectful, passionate and engaged on the issue, the national media has focused on the angry few at the far edges of the political spectrum. That’s unfortunate, because there is far more agreement than disagreement.

Last month you sent a clear message that you wanted Congress to slow down and allow more time for discussion and debate.  That you want us to reform health care in a bipartisan way incorporating the best ideas from both parties.  Although the debate has been at times stressful for us all, the last month as been a most useful exercise of democracy.

As the discussion continues, I urge all Idahoans to look beyond the national rhetoric and disagreements, and instead look for common ground. We must fix a system that has failed that young woman with leukemia, and the dairy farmer with pins in his shoulder.  We need comprehensive health care reform but we must get it right.

And as Americans, not Republicans or Democrats, we need to do it together.