Report on Health Care Reform

Last month the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) released its report entitled "Americans Speak on Health Reform: Report on Health Care Community Discussions."

This 122 page document summarizes over 3,000 community discussions and over 30,000 written surveys involving American consumers about the state of our current health care system.

The findings:

• The cost of health care & health insurance is a top concern (55%)
• An overriding belief that there is a general lack of emphasis on prevention (20%)
• Concerns about pre-existing conditions that limit access to insurance coverage (13%)
• Concerns about quality of care (12%)

Comment

While this research was conducted by President Obama's Transition Team and may be criticized as having political overtones, the results clearly point out the greatest concern of Americans: the cost of health care & health insurance.

This report provides strong evidence that consumers care deeply about being able to afford health care and health insurance while emphasizing our system is not doing enough to promote wellness. Unfortunately the report lacks meaningful suggestions on how to manage health care's increasing costs and no clear recommendations on who will ultimately pay for health care services in the future.

The debate on health care reform is going to become a hot issue as the year progresses and as Congress begins the debate on how to fix our health care system. The challenge of finding ways to improve American health system woes is immense and it will be interesting to see what happens.

NOTE: For a free copy of this report, simply contact Cooper Research by clicking on the "contact us" link.

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