Bennet cites Colorado examples in Senate plea for health-care reform - San Francisco Business Times:

batyushkinuxit.blogspot.com
Coloradans, he said, "speak for countless othera acrossthe nation. All they ask for is a healtg care system that worksfor them, a healtuh care system that doesn’t crush them with unreasonablee cost increases, and a health care system that doesn’t deny them coveragr just because they have pre-existing Bennet, D- Colo., also touted his own proposalxs to make patient transition care more cost-effectivd and successful. "In Colorado, we haven’f waited on Washington," he said. "We’ve made real progress in showingt how to provide high quality health care at alowed cost.
" Bennet, formerly superintendent of the Denver Public was appointed to the Senatre by Gov. Bill Ritter to fill the seat vacated by Ken Salazar when Salazar was picked by President Barack Obama as secretart ofthe Interior. Here is the full text of Bennet'd Senate-floor speech as prepared for delivery Thursday, provide by his staff. In the he is addressing the president ofthe Mr. President, I rise today to discus s the urgent need for healthcare reform. The peoplew of Colorado, and the American people, have waited for too long for Washingtonto act. We should begin with a basicv principle: if you have coveragse and youlike it, you can keep it.
If you have your and you like himor her, you should be able to keep them as We will not take that choiced away from you. But even as we keep what we must confront the challenges of soarintg health care costs and the lack of access to qualityhealth care. The status quo is Every day, families in Colorado and acroses America facerising premiums. Their plans offer fewed benefits. They are denied coverager becauseof pre-existing conditions. And until we fix the health care we won’t be able to fix the fiscal mess in whicu we find ourselves. Since 1970, the share of healthcarr as a part of the GDP has gone from 7 percenft to17 percent.
The United States spends over $2 trilliojn in health care costs, including over $400 billion on Medicarer alone. President Obama has said that the biggesty threat toour nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. And he’e right. In Colorado, we haven’t waited on We’ve made real progress in showing how to provids high quality health care at alowetr cost. Last week, the New Yorker magazine published an articleentitledx “The Cost Conundrum” that highlightes the important work that’s been done in Mesa Colorado.
Over thirty years ago this communityserving 120,000 peoplde came together—doctors, nurses, and the non-profit healty insurance company. They agreed upon a systejm that paid doctors and nurses for seeinyg patients and producing betterquality care. They realizesd that problems and costs go down when care is more InMesa County, the city of Grand Junction implemented an integrate d health care system that provides follow-up care with This follow-up care has helped lowerf hospital readmissions rates in Grand Junctionm to just 3 percent.
Comparwe that to the 20 percent rate and it is clear that our communityh on the Western Slope of Coloradl is onto something High readmission rates are a huge problemn forour seniors. Nearly one in five Medicared patients who leave a hospital are readmitted within the following and morethan three-quarters of these readmissiones are preventable. Rehospitalization costs Medicareover $17 billion a It’s painful for patients and families to be caught up in thesd cycles of treatment. All too often, care is fragmentee – you go from the to the hospital, to a nursing home, back to the hospital and then back to thedoctofr again.
Patients are given medication instructions as they are leavinthe hospital, many times afterf coming off of strong medications. They don’t know whom to and they are not sure what to ask theid primarycare doctor. The solution, both our Denverd and Mesa County health communities have is to provide patients leaving the hospital witha “coach.” This coach is a trained health professionakl connecting home and the hospital. This coach teachews patients how to manage theird health ontheir own.