Comparison of Democrat vs Republican Health Care Plans

The Democratic Platform The underlying principles set out in the Democratic platform’s section on health care begins with making sure every man, woman and child has access to quality, affordable health care. It also includes: Affordable quality health care is essential to making workers productive and businesses competitive; Affordable coverage should be subsidized through tax credits and other means; Health care coverage should be a shared responsibility between the worker, employers, insurers, providers and government; Disparities in health coverage should be ended among minorities and low-income people; Americans should have a choice between keeping their private coverage and public health plans; and Government should ensure that all Americans should have meaningful and affordable coverage. The Democratic plan also addresses the need to build a strong health care workforce, specifically mentioning direct-care workers as part of that workforce. The Republican Platform The Republican platform calls for: Disease prevention programs and health information technology to improve care; Individual choice of plans and providers; Malpractice reform; Rewarding good providers; Cost containment through competition; Funding medical research; Providing tax credits to families to purchase insurance, including Health Savings Accounts and high-deductible health plans; and Financing expanded coverage by taxing employee benefits. Conclusions While many details are yet to be worked out for both of these platforms, the principles outlined in the Democratic platform line up best with what HCHCW has found works best in expanding coverage to low-income direct-care workers and their families. Specifically, HCHCW has found, health care plans must be: Accessible to all individuals regardless of their family, their employment status, or how many hours they work; Affordable for workers and their employers, with limited cost sharing for workers earning low wages; and Adequate, with a full range of benefits and individual services to protect older workers, whose with chronic health conditions, and injured workers. For more information on the essential elements of a health care plan for the direct-care workforce, read Expanding Coverage for Caregivers: A Checklist for State Health Care Reform (pdf). Allison Lee National Campaign Manager ALee@phinational.org response from the Direct Care Alliance's Roy Gedat I actually know people here in the USA who have died because they could not afford timely care and put off going to the doctor till it was too late. The greatest irony is that people who provide home and institutional health care are too often uncovered by our broken system. How many people are dying in the UK and Canada because they are waiting for common surgeries? Hopefully the USA will someday join the rest of the world and assure every citizen the health care they need. I think we need to get the profit out of health care all together. We can bail out the mortgage companies…. why can’t we have a comprehensive health care system that works?