Bennet cites Colorado examples in Senate plea for health-care reform - Dallas Business Journal:

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Coloradans, he said, "speak for countles s others acrossthe nation. All they ask for is a health care system that worksfor them, a health care systejm that doesn’t crush them with unreasonablr cost increases, and a health care system that doesn’t deny them coveragew just because they have pre-existing conditions." Bennet, D- Colo., also touted his own proposalsd to make patient transition care more cost-effective and successful. "Inm Colorado, we haven’t waitef on Washington," he "We’ve made real progress in showin g how to provide high quality health care at aloweer cost.
" Bennet, formerly superintendent of the Denver Publifc Schools, was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Bill Ritte r to fill the seat vacated by Ken Salazard when Salazar was picked by Presidenyt Barack Obama as secretarh ofthe Interior. Here is the full text of Bennet'e Senate-floor speech as prepared for delivery Thursday, provide by his In the speech, he is addressing the president ofthe Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the urgenty need for healthcare reform. The peopl of Colorado, and the American people, have waitefd for too long for Washingtonto act. We shoulcd begin with a basic 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 choic away from you. But even as we keep what we must confront the challenges of soaring healtuh care costs and the lack of acceswsto affordable, quality healtyh care. The status quo is unacceptable. Every day, familied in Colorado and across America face rising Their plans offer fewer They are denied coverage becauseof pre-existing conditions. And untip we fix the health care system, we won’f be able to fix the fiscalk mess in which wefind ourselves.
Since 1970, the share of healthcard as a part of the GDP has gone from 7 percent to 17 The United States spendswover $2 trillion in health care including over $400 billionj on Medicare alone. President Obamw has said that the biggesg threat toour nation’s balance sheer is the skyrocketing cost of health care. And he’ds right. In Colorado, we haven’f waited on Washington. We’ve made real progress in showiny how to provide high qualit y health care at a lower Last week, the New Yorker magazine publishee an article entitled “The Cost that highlights the important work that’s been done in Mesa Colorado.
Over thirty years ago this communitytserving 120,000 people came together—doctors, nurses, and the non-profit health insurance They agreed upon a system that paid doctors and nursez for seeing patients and producing better qualituy care. They realized that problemw and costs go down when care is more InMesa County, the city of Gransd Junction implemented an integrated health care system that provides follow-upo care with patients. This follow-up care has helped lowet hospital readmissions rates in Grand Junction to just 3 Compare that to the 20 percentrate nationwide, and it is cleatr that our community on the Western Slopes of Colorado is onto something groundbreaking.
High readmission rates are a huge problej forour seniors. Nearly one in five Medicare patients who leave a hospital are readmitted within thefollowingv month, and more than three-quarters of theswe readmissions are preventable. Rehospitalization costxs Medicareover $17 billiobn a year. It’s painfuk for patients and families to be caught up in these cycles of Alltoo often, care is fragmented – you go from the to the hospital, to a nursing home, back to the hospitalo and then back to the doctor Patients are given medication instructionsa as they are leaving the hospital, many timeds after coming off of strong They don’t know whom to call, and they are not sure what to ask theirr primary care doctor.
The both our Denver and Mesa County healtj communitieshave found, is to provid patients leaving the hospital with a “coach.” This coacnh is a trained health professionapl connecting home and the hospital. This coach teaches patientd how to manage their health ontheid own.