Dear Editor:
It seems the nation’s broken health care system has finally reached the top of the domestic agenda and our lawmakers need to tackle the problem in earnest.
The mounting problems in health care breed cynicism, stress and even despair. Groups like AARP are fighting to make the system work for everyone. They believe that Congress should take these six steps to guarantee that all Americans have the choice of quality health care plans they can afford: Guarantee affordable coverage for Americans ages 50-64, close the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole”, create access to generic versions of costly biologic drugs, prevent costly hospital readmissions by creating a Medicare follow-up care benefit to help people transition home after a hospital stay, increase federal funding and eligibility for home and community-based services through Medicaid, and improve programs that help low-income Americans in Medicare afford the health care and prescription drugs they need.
Our health care system costs too much, wastes too much, makes too many mistakes and gives us back too little value for our money. Preventable readmissions alone cost Medicare billions. The need for fair, bipartisan measures to repair the system has never been so urgent.
Jane Magnus