Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman campaigned in New Hampshire yesterday. The Connecticut Senator used a stop at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to discuss his plans to improve heath care.
Senator Lieberman said the nation?s health care system is plagued by contradiction?. It provides the best health care treatment, yet leaves more than 40 million citizens without insurance?.. It possesses the best Dr?s??.yet insurance companies at times dictate treatment decisions??..Lieberman said if elected, he?d work to change that?He also promised to eradicate the divide that separates the care given the well-off and the poor?.And stressed he?d do so without radically altering the existing heath care landscape.
?You know the Clinton?s tried that?..I love em?..but sometimes when you try to do that you don?t get anything done??.I think this is a plan that really could get done?..and help children?..unemployed, self employed, small businesses and their employees?..and seniors who are not old enough to qualify for medicare?..so I think it?s the right model.?
Lieberman?s model includes extending federal-state Medicaid coverage to all adults under 25 and low income pregnant women?..He also proposes a new program he calls MediKids. It would cover all newborns and be free for families of limited means??Lieberman says everybody else will have the chance to buy coverage under a scheme modeled on the insurance program for federal employees?
"My plan insures more people than any other non-single payer plan that?s been proposed?..and does it the lowest cost per person.."
Liberman estimates his plans total cost at some 53 billion a year over the first five years?.Lieberman earmarks another 15 billion dollars?..to find cures to diseases such as cancer?..heart disease and MS??.Leiberman said the launch of his American center for cures would be his moonshot proposal?
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"Finding cures to the chronic diseases that afflict a hundred million people in this country and consume more than 3/4s of the heathcare costs of our nation, I can?t think of anything that as president I would want to get started and get accomplished."
Lieberman said to achieve scientific breakthroughs researches need to be free of the ideology driven polices of the bush administration. He promised if elected his first act as president would be to remove the restrictions on stem-cell research.
