WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) today joined President Obama and leaders in the health care community at a White House Health Care Summit. Brown heard from health care experts and stakeholders and shared his ideas for successful health care reform.
“Today’s summit recognizes that health care reform is critical to the security of both American families and U.S. businesses,” said Brown. “We spend more on health care than any other nation, yet more than 45 million Americans are uninsured and other countries are achieving better health outcomes. Health care reform is about covering the uninsured and bringing down the costs of health care in this country. We can do this by investing in preventive medicine and health information technology, reducing medical errors, and removing needless red tape in our system.”
The Summit included break-out sessions enabling small groups discussions on health care coverage and cost. Senator Brown’s group was moderated by Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. Attendees included Senators Mikulski, Harkin, Gregg, Rangel; Representatives Camp, Pallone, Capps, Herger, Becerra, Kennedy, and Cantor; and health care leaders Joe Hansen of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), Dan Danner of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), Sister Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association, Elena Rios of the Hispanic Medical Association, Karen Ignani of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Bill Emmett of the Campaign for Mental Health Reform, Dr. Ho Tran of the Asian and Pacific Islander Health Forum, Ron Pollack of Families USA, and John Podesta of the Center for American Progress.
Brown has been a longtime champion of improving health care access and affordability. At the start of the 111th session of Congress in January, Brown introduced the Small Business Empowerment Act, legislation that would establish affordable coverage options for small businesses and self-employed individuals.
Most recently, Brown successfully fought for the economic recovery package to include provisions from his original legislation, the Coverage Continuity Act, which was written to help displaced workers maintain health coverage. The final version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides a 65 percent federal subsidy to help these workers afford temporary COBRA health coverage.
Brown is also a leading proponent of food and drug safety. Earlier this year, he responded to the nationwide salmonella outbreak by authoring sweeping food safety legislation that grants federal authority to recall tainted foods with better accuracy and trace-ability. When he was first elected to Congress, Brown pledged to refuse the federal health coverage offered to all Members of Congress until all Ohioans were granted equal access to affordable health coverage. He continues to refuse this coverage.
The U.S. currently outspends every other country with health care costs of $2.4 trillion each year. Many of these costs are due to unnecessary administrative expenses or preventable medical errors that together account for more than $160 billion of health care costs annually. The World Health ranks the U.S. far behind other countries in health care outcomes. The U.S. places 37th in overall quality of health care and is dead last among industrialized nations for preventable mortality.
“I’m encouraged that President Obama has set us on a path for reforming the health care system. I look forward to working with him and my colleagues to make health care work for American families and businesses,” said Brown.
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