Healthy Americans Act - Findings

Findings

The bill's priorities are reflected in its list of congressional findings:

1. Americans want affordable, guaranteed private health coverage that makes them healthier and can never be taken away.
2. American health care provides primarily `sick care' and does not do enough to prevent chronic illnesses like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. This results in significantly higher health costs for all Americans.
3. Staying as healthy as possible often requires an individual to change behavior and assume more personal responsibility for his or her health.
4. Personal responsibility for one's health should include purchasing one's own private health care coverage.
5. To accompany this new focus on staying healthy and personal responsibility, our government must guarantee that all Americans receive private affordable health coverage that can never be taken away.
6. Financing this guarantee should be a shared responsibility between individuals, the Government, and employers.
7. The $2.2 trillion spent annually on American health care must be spent more effectively in order to meet this guarantee.
8. This guarantee must include easier access to understandable information about the quality, cost, and effectiveness of health care providers, products, and services.
9. The fact that businesses in the United States compete globally against businesses whose governments pay for health care, coupled with the aging of the American population and the explosive growth of preventable health problems, makes the status quo in American health care unacceptable.