Healthcare

American healthcare is in crisis; we must make it a priority to cover all of our children, while working towards universal healthcare coverage for all Americans.

Not only are far too many Americans today suffering from lack of access to adequate care, increasingly the cost of healthcare is placing nearly intolerable financial burdens on our nation. We must work to enact a system of universal coverage that is cost effective, puts the consumer in control, includes portability, preventative care, long-term care, and a better prescription drug plan than is currently offered under Medicare.

I have a unique insight into health care. I began my career as a Clinical Dietitian, after receiving my Bachelor of Science in Dietetics from Edinboro University. More recently, as a small business owner, I have come to understand healthcare from an employer perspective. We offer health care to our employees in an industry where many employers do not.

I will take this knowledge and experience and use it to help negotiate a solution to our health care crisis.

We must begin by covering all of our children. It is inexcusable that we have uninsured children in our country. This must be done first while we work towards a universal system. We cannot allow the debate for the ‘right' system to delay covering our children.

That debate will include questions about the cost of universal healthcare. We will need to study our cost structures and better understand the relationship between expenditures on healthcare and patient success. We must learn to spend with more precision, negotiate prescription drug prices, encourage modernization, and focus on the maintenance of good health and preventative medicine.

Preventive medicine in its many forms - including adequate prenatal care, early childhood care, physical fitness programs in schools, reasonable diets and other lifestyle choices - will allow us to be proactive, taking more control over and more responsibility for our own health. Preventive and early detection testing, often not covered by insurance under our current healthcare system, will save millions of dollars and most importantly lives.