America leads the world in medical research and medical care, and for all we spend on health care we should be the healthiest people on Earth. Yet in some of our most important indicators, like how long we live, we’re not even ranked in the top 25. People in many other countries, countries like Bosnia and Jordan, live longer than we do, even though we spend a lot more money on our health care.
We can do better. Working to create common sense health care policy is a key to improve our health care system and make it more affordable, accessible and fair.
New federal and state health care reform laws may not be perfect, but they give us new tools to begin to create the change we need.
Through these laws, we are improving access to health insurance, helping to ensure everyone can afford to see a doctor for medical care when they are sick, and to get screenings for cancer and heart disease, so we can catch these diseases early. These new laws support training for more doctors and nurses and using technology to improve our system. These laws also have pieces that will improve the quality of our health care and begin to pay health care providers for how they help people, not for how much they do to people.
By working together we can give everyone in Colorado and in Aurora a chance to live a healthy life.
To learn more about the new health care law watch this short movie created by the Kaiser Family Foundation. It explains everything from the problems with the current system to the changes ahead.
Or visit HealthCareAndYou.org to learn about specific parts of the law and how they impact you and your family.
Additional Resources
You can also keep up with Colorado’s work on the national health care reform law at the official state web portal.
