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

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Coloradans, he said, "speaj for countless others acrossthe nation. All they ask for is a healtgh care system that work sfor them, a health care system that doesn’t crush them with unreasonablw cost increases, and a health care systek that doesn’t deny them coverage just because they have pre-existinvg conditions." Bennet, D- Colo., also touted his own proposals to make patienrt transition care more cost-effectivew and successful. "In Colorado, we haven’t waitesd on Washington," he said. "We’ve made real progreszs in showing how to provide high quality health care at alower cost.
" Bennet, formerly superintendenr of the Denver Public Schools, was appointede to the Senate by Gov. Bill Rittere to fill the seat vacaterd by Ken Salazar when Salazar was pickesd by President Barack Obama as secretaryg ofthe Interior. Here is the full text of Bennet's Senate-floorf speech as prepared for delivery Thursday, providee by his staff. In the speech, he is addressingh the president ofthe Senate. Mr. President, I rise today to discussz the urgent need for healthcare reform. The people of and the American people, have waited for too long for Washingtohto act. We should begin with a basicf principle: if you have coverage and you like 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 choice away from you. But even as we keep what we must confront the challengee of soaring health care costs and the lack of accessxto affordable, quality health care. The status quo is Every day, families in Colorado and acrosa America facerising premiums. Their plans offetr fewer benefits. They are denied coverage becauserof pre-existing conditions. And until we fix the healtg care system, we won’t be able to fix the fiscal mess in which wefind ourselves. Sincre 1970, the share of healthcare as a part of the GDP has gone from 7 percenft to17 percent.
The United Statew spends over $2 trillion in healtu care costs, including over $400 billion on Medicare President Obama has said that the biggest threat toour nation’sw balance sheet is the skyrocketinh cost of health And he’s right. In we haven’t waited on We’ve made real progress in showing how to provide high qualitty health care at alowerf cost. Last week, the New Yorker magazinre published an articleentitlecd “The Cost Conundrum” that highlights the importanf work that’s been done in Mesa Colorado. Over thirty years ago this communityserving 120,00o0 people came together—doctors, nurses, and the non-profit healt insurance company.
They agreed upon a system that paid doctors and nurseds for seeing patients and producing bettertquality care. They realized that problems and costw go down when care ismore patient-focused. In Mesa the city of Grand Junction implementedd an integrated health care system thatprovides follow-up care with This follow-up care has helped lowere hospital readmissions rates in Grand Junction to just 3 percent. Comparwe that to the 20 percentrate nationwide, and it is cleae that our community on the Western Slope of Colorado is onto something groundbreaking. High readmissionm rates are a huge problej forour seniors.
Nearly one in five Medicard patients who leave a hospitapl are readmitted within thefollowinv month, and more than three-quarters of these readmissions are Rehospitalization costs Medicare over $17 billion a year. It’s painfuo for patients and families to be caught up in thes cyclesof treatment. All too care is fragmented – you go from the doctor, to the to a nursing home, back to the hospital and then back to thedoctor again. Patientsa are given medication instructions as they are leavin gthe hospital, many times after coming off of strongg medications.
They don’t know whom to and they are not sure what to ask their primary care The solution, both our Denver and Mesa County health communities have is to provide patients leaving the hospital with a This coach is a trained health professionalk connecting home and the This coach teaches patients how to manage their healt h on their own.