Issue Position: Economic Plan: A New Direction - Control Health Care Costs

Issue Position

The spiraling cost of health care is strangling small businesses and families and hindering our global competitiveness. Yet, John Sununu actually told New Hampshire business leaders to "stop complaining about health care."

Jeanne Shaheen believes there are significant steps Washington can take to make health care more affordable for New Hampshire businesses.

* Establish a tax credit for small businesses. Jeanne Shaheen is proposing a tax credit of up to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses that pay for at least 60 percent of their employees' health care premiums and are located in states like New Hampshire where insurance companies are barred from discriminating against businesses that have sick workers.
* Lower the cost of prescription drugs. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should allow the reimportation of safe, cheap prescription drugs from Canada and will push to end patent abuses that prevent cheaper generic drugs from coming to market.
* Boost preventative care and chronic disease management. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should retool our current health care system to place greater emphasis on preventive care and chronic disease management. Over two-thirds of all health care costs today are spent on chronic care, and that drives up health insurance premiums for all of us. We currently have a sick care system and what we really need is a health care system.
* Apply new technology to health records and information. Currently, there is more information technology in most grocery stores than in most doctors' offices. Digitizing health information reduces duplication, avoids errors, allows providers to use data to improve their patients' outcomes and reduce costs and improves quality reporting and research into the effectiveness of different treatments. Transferring medical records to an electronic format lowers costs and increases efficiency.
* Reduce medication errors. Preventable medication errors cost about $1 billion a year and most medication errors are systems related, not the result of individual negligence or misconduct. System improvements can reduce error rates, improve quality and cut costs. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should invest in programs like those implemented at the VA, which have reduced costly and dangerous medication errors by 70 percent.

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