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Health Care Reform

Fix what’s broken, keep what works

At Independence Blue Cross, we get it. The status quo in health care, which allows 46 million of our fellow Americans to remain uninsured, is unsustainable and unacceptable. We believe that everyone should have health coverage, regardless of age or preexisting conditions, and we understand that rising medical costs are devastating to working families, small businesses, and our nation.

Clearly, we must fix what’s broken without breaking what’s working. That’s why we strongly support comprehensive health care reform that would extend coverage to all Americans.

We agree with the basic goals of the health care reform package that’s developing in Washington: ensure everyone is covered, require insurers to accept everyone regardless of health status, establish a way to simplify the purchase of insurance, and provide a helping hand to make coverage affordable for working families and small businesses. We also strongly believe health plans can lead the way toward effectively and innovatively improving quality and containing costs through simplifying administration, redesigning payment for doctors and hospitals to reward quality, focusing on disease management and prevention, and introducing health information technology.

We support building on the current employer-based system that serves 170 million Americans and believe we ought to give reform a chance first, without starting a new government-run plan also known as a public option. Such a plan would undercut President Obama’s pledge that people who like their health care plans and doctors can keep them, and would lead to dangerous, if unintended, consequences for millions of Americans. Some have expressed concern that a government plan would be the first step in the total government takeover of our health care system. In fact,a leading health policy consulting firm estimates that two-thirds of Americans — 119 million people — would leave their employer-based health plans if a government-run option were available.

Tremendous strides are being made to reach consensus and it’s possible that legislation may be ready for the President’s signature by the State of the Union address on January 21.  As Congress continues to refine health care reform legislation, we will remain steadfastly focused on advocating for what we believe is best for our members. By working together, we can fix our health care system.

Find out more

From our industry’s top trade associations

• America's Health Insurance Plans
• Blue Cross Blue Shield Association

From our 2008 Annual Report

• Why does my health insurance cost so much?
• Working together to lower health care costs.

Studies

• Factors fueling rising health care costs from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
• The cost and coverage impact of a public plan from The Lewin Group.

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