Securing Quality Affordable Health Care for Missouri
We can’t fix our economy and increase wages unless we stop the runaway cost of health care.
Today, the U.S. spends almost twice the amount on health care as the average industrialized nation—roughly $2 trillion every year and rising. That’s nearly 17 percent of our economy! These costs are crushing our families, burdening our small businesses and farmers and threatening our nation’s long term fiscal health. Average health insurance premiums in Missouri, where only two insurance companies control 79 percent of the market, have nearly doubled since 2000.
Largely as a result of these costs, forty-six million Americans—including more than 750,000 Missourians—don’t have any health coverage at all. Millions more are at risk of losing their current coverage, struggling to pay skyrocketing insurance premiums—and still don’t have access to the treatment and medications they need.
The current system does work for an elite few: namely, the insurance company CEOs who continue to rake in record profits by charging higher premiums and finding ways to avoid paying for our care when we get sick. And the system works for those Washington insiders who take their money.
In short, Missourians are paying more into and getting less out of our health care system than ever before—and that’s not right.
As a breast cancer survivor, Robin Carnahan understands the importance of access to health care in a very personal way. She believes that solving this crisis and making sure all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care will require real leadership and commonsense, bipartisan policies that keep what works about our current system and fix what doesn’t. For Robin, successful health insurance reform will:
- Ensure more stability, affordability and access for Missouri families and businesses: including the choice to keep their current plan and doctor.
- Cut costs: for families and small businesses by creating real competition to drive down prices and improve quality and keep the insurance companies honest.
- Stop insurance companies from denying coverage: because of someone’s age or a pre-existing condition and from overcharging small businesses.
- Put doctors and patients in charge: not insurance company CEOs and their administrators who try to figure out ways to deny care.
- Protect and strengthen Medicare: for current beneficiaries and future retirees.
- Provide greater access: to coverage for the uninsured, and more affordable, quality coverage for everyone.
