Dear Supporters:
Given your interest in health care, I thought you should know that I met with former Senator Tom Daschle, the Secretary-designee for the Department of Health and Human Services. We met in my Capitol Hill office today to discuss policies that impact North Dakota.
Health care is vital to every American, and the Secretary-designee shares my desire to make our system work better for patients, providers and payers. We need to build our health care infrastructure - health IT and comparative effectiveness research - to improve quality and increase efficiency. And we must find a way to provide more people insurance coverage, because insurance costs for all Americans go up with the number of uninsured. Finally, we must find ways to slow growth in health care spending. We spend the most of any industrialized nation and get worse outcomes.
During our meeting, I urged the Secretary-designee to support Medicare payment reforms that reward high-quality, low-cost providers, like what we have in North Dakota. For too long, our rural providers have been shortchanged by outdated and unfair payment policies, and I intend to work with the new Administration and my colleagues in Congress to change these policies.
We face many challenges as a country, and health care must be a priority for the incoming Administration and new Congress. I am confident that Senator Daschle understands the importance of health reform and maintaining the health care safety net in rural America.
Sincerely,
KENT CONRAD
United States Senate
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