Seems odd to say this, but I am a lucky person. I have always had a good job or at least a run of good jobs. I have a very good wife and two wonderful sons. I have been married for 30 plus years. In addition to that I come from a family with three siblings, my parents were married till death did they part. I wasn’t abused, sometimes my father had to show me the errors in my ways but after the initial sting of the branch or belt the lesson was learned and life went on. The point to this is that I come from a traditional family back ground. Many people today cannot say this. And it is hard to realize what it is like to grow up any other way.
While I feel that all my issues are important the single largest is the family whether it is a two parent family or a single parent family we need to work to help them get through tough times as a unit. When I elected I plan to work on legislation
Creating jobs; creating good paying jobs with benefits including health care, and retirement.
Helping to develop a health care system that insures every citizen of Colorado the best care possible.
Work to insure early learning by making pre-school more accessible
Work to provide more school councilors to aid parents in detecting problems their children may be facing as well as give guidance to the student as far as a career path to follow, not every student can go to college there fore we need to establish a good technical program that will work industry to re-establish a strong blue collar work force.
We also need to anchor our higher education and get control of costs and help make sure those who can attend college have the financial ability to do so.
Work with all my strength to defeat Amendment 47! This amendment is a direct assault on workers rights. Passage of this amendment and placing it in the constitution will do as much to destroy this state as did the tabor amendment.
Health Care
The issue of health care is both delicate to the candidate, but equally important to the general public. As many people do, I also feel that the current state of health care in this country has serious problems.
I consider the current health care system to be a restricted market. I mean that the insurance industry as whole is a group of profit-seeking firms, and consumers don’t have a free choice to switch between market alternatives.
I have been reading the Governors blue ribbon commission report. I do agree in principle in the report and its findings. I also give credit to those who spent their time to create it. At the same time, I feel there needs to be more direction as to which path to go to resolve the problem at hand.
The report gave a idea, which I agree with. Any legislation needs to encompass three principles and they all need to work together. These include Access, Quality, and be cost effective.
COST
Different ways to cut cost include :
Cutting back on regulations and mandates : to do this we need to cut some state imposed rules and restrictions such as requiring cancer screening or mental health benefits. However I feel that these two strike to close to home for to many people and will not be acceptable.
Providing incentives for adopting healthy habits: an example would be to provide tax breaks and legal protection to employers who implement wellness programs.
Capping administrative cost: it has been shown that that administrative costs are around 7.5% of the total health care costs in Colorado and they continue to rise.
ACCESS
Access can be improved by:
Enrolling those who are already eligible for public programs such as Medicaid but not currently enrolled. There are approximately 85,000 eligible but not currently enrolled.
Mandates which to me would be the least desirable, but might be necessary. Today Colorado only participates in few of these programs. Some programs would include pregnant women, and children up to 5 years of age who if their income is no more than 133% of the Federal Poverty Level. Another would be children 6 to 18 if their income is less than 100% of the FPL. These levels are lean compared to some other states.
QUALITY
As far as quality we could:
Enhance the use of data and make data more transparent . the use of information on quality-related measures can drive improvements in health care, and lead to better health out comes for patients.
Creating electronic medical records. We could make histories available to to providers so they can make better informed decisions about health care and reduce redundancies.
Support the use of treatment guidelines and evidence base medicine.
Inn the book of Leviticus there is a passage that requires farmers to leave a portion of their crops in the field after harvesting for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.
So I submit to you that denying health care because of cost is very similar if not identical to denying food to the widow, or the orphan, and the stranger.
