President Bush’s comprehensive health care agenda improves health security for all Americans by building on the best features of American health care. Our health care system can provide the best care in the world, but rising costs and loss of control to government and health plan bureaucrats threaten to keep patients from getting state-of-the-art care.

The President believes that everyone should be able to choose a health care plan that meets their needs at a price they can afford. When people have good choices, health plans have to compete for their business – which means higher quality and better care.

Before the American Medical Association, President Bush announced his bold new proposal for modernizing and strengthening America’s health care system by giving Medicare recipients more health care choices. The President’s plan gives seniors more health care choices and helps them with the high costs of health care and prescription drugs.

To create a health care system that puts the needs of patients first, the President proposed steps to:

• Help all Americans get affordable health care coverage and ensure access to doctors
• Help patients get high-quality care every time
• Modernize Medicare with prescription drug coverage that enables seniors to get the medicines they need, without the government dictating their drug choices.
• Allow patients the choice of doctors, hospitals, or treatment centers.
• Provide full coverage for disease prevention such as screenings for cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis.
• Develop new treatments to keep patients healthy and prevent complications from diseases and strengthen the health care safety net

The President’s health care agenda is designed to improve the accessibility, affordability and accountability of health care for every American – and to make sure that American health care keeps getting better. The President’s budget backs up his agenda with investments in prevention initiatives, expanded coverage programs, improved care for seniors and important medical research.

Offering Health Care Choice by Modernizing Medicare

The President has proposed a framework to modernize and improve Medicare that builds on principles he outlined in July 2001. He looks forward to working with Congress on legislation to bring more choices and better benefits to Medicare this year. The President has committed up to $400 billion over the next ten years in his FY 2004 budget to pay for modernizing and improving Medicare. The President’s framework will give all Medicare beneficiaries access to:

• Prescription drug coverage that enables seniors to get the medicines they need, without the government dictating their drug choices.
• Choice of an individual health care plan that best fits their needs just like Members of Congress and other federal employees enjoy today.
• Choice of the doctor, hospital, or place they want for the treatment and care they need.
• Full coverage for disease prevention such as screenings for cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis.

The President’s plan will make sure that low-income seniors receive additional financial assistance so they will not have to pay more to receive better benefits than they currently do under Medicare. For too long, political pressures have kept our nation from bringing the benefits of modern health care to Medicare. The President is calling upon members of both political parties to work together with him to pass legislation this year.

Every American Should Have Access to a Good Doctor

President Bush has proposed a framework for addressing the medical liability crisis that is forcing communities to lose doctors.

• National adoption of proven standards to make the medical liability system more fair, predictable, and timely. Experience in many states has demonstrated that these standards can reduce federal government costs by at least $28 billion per year or more, freeing up needed funds for making health care more affordable. These standards can reduce health care costs for all Americans by $60 billion or more, and improve access to quality health care as well. The President proposes that Congress take action to:
  • Secure the ability of injured patients to get quick, unlimited compensation for their "economic losses," including the loss of ability to provide unpaid services like care for children or parents.
  • Ensure that recoveries for non-economic damages do not exceed a reasonable amount ($250,000).
  • Reserve punitive damages for cases where they are justified, and limit punitive damages to reasonable amounts.
  • Provide for payments of judgments over time rather than in a single lump sum, to ensure that appropriate payments are there when patients need them.
  • Ensure that old cases cannot be brought years after an event.
  • Reduce the amount that doctors must pay if a plaintiff has received other payments from an insurer to compensate for their losses.
  • Provide that defendants pay judgments in proportion to their fault.
• Improvements in health care quality and patient safety through litigation reform. Patients deserve high-quality health care without avoidable medical errors and complications, and the Administration is supporting many efforts to achieve this goal, through better information and other steps to improve quality. One proven approach to reducing errors and complications is patient safety and quality improvement programs implemented by doctors and health care organizations working together. By sharing information on quality problems and medical errors, health professionals can determine ways to avoid errors and complications in the first place. But these efforts are blocked by fear of litigation. Good-faith efforts to improve quality and safety are targets for lawsuits based on the new information. The President has called for legislation to make it possible for health professionals to work together more effectively to provide the best possible care for all patients.

Providing Affordable Health Care Choices That Meets America’s Needs:

• The President believes that everyone should be able to choose a health care plan that meets their needs at a price they can afford.
• Americans enjoy access to good choices in employer-sponsored health care plans, but many others do not have good coverage options or are in danger of losing them.
• The President’s plan proposes to address this problem through over $117 billion in initiatives to make good health care coverage more available and affordable:
  • The President’s plan lifts the excessive restrictions on Medical Savings Accounts which will allow many more Americans to set up tax-free accounts to protect themselves from high out-of-pocket costs.
  • The President supports legislation that would make it easier for small employers to pool together to offer their employees better health coverage options, like many large corporations are able to offer. 
  • The President’s budget proposes $89 billion in new health credits to make private health insurance more affordable for low- and middle-income American families who do not have employer-subsidized insurance.
• The Administration will work with states to strengthen Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).
  • The President’s budget provides $350 million to continue funding Medicaid for families in transition from welfare to work.
  • The President's budget strengthens S-CHIP by making available to states an estimated $3.2 billion in unused S-CHIP funds that otherwise will be lost. These additional matching funds will enable all states to expand coverage to the uninsured.
• The President believes that Americans who need long-term care assistance should have more control over how they receive the care they need. The President’s budget proposes to make premium payments for long-term care insurance fully deductible, to provide a much-needed, more flexible alternative to “spending down” to Medicaid. The 10-year cost of this proposal is $20 billion.
• The Bush Administration proposes an additional tax exemption for persons who take time to care for parents or children who need long-term assistance.

Improving the Quality of Health Care

• The President strongly supports the passage of a Patients’ Bill of Rights that leaves medical decisions in the hands of physicians, instead of insurance companies – and urges Congress to reconcile differences and complete its work this year.
• President Bush will work with Congress to develop fair and reasonable legislation that will make genetic discrimination illegal and provide protections consistent with other existing anti-discrimination laws.
• The Administration continues to take steps to make better information on medical treatments and the quality of health care providers available to the public, including new information on nursing home quality.
• Electronic medical records hold the promise of improving quality of care for patients and for giving them more control over their health information, but only with strong medical privacy protections that give patients the security and confidence they need. The Administration is implementing new medical privacy protections to do just that.

Increasing Biomedical Research and Strengthening the Health Care Safety Net

• The President’s plan increases funding for the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) efforts to support research to improve the prevention, detection and treatment of diseases. 
• The President’s budget includes $5.9 billion for bioterrorism preparedness, an increase of $4.5 billion – more than three times the 2002 base funding level.
• The President’s budget includes $1.5 billion for Community Health Centers, a $114 million increase that would continue the Bush Administration's long-term strategy to add 1,200 new and expanded health center sites over five years and serve an additional 6.1 million patients. The increase for fiscal year 2003 will support 170 new and expanded health centers, and provide services to a million more patients.