Health Care

Better - and Smarter Health Care

The numbers don't lie. Almost eight in ten of the uninsured are U.S. citizens. More than 800,000 Coloradoans—17 percent of the population—do not have health coverage, including 175,000 children. Many more are underinsured. Thankfully, at least some measure of health reform has past this year. These numbers may decrease, but the problem remains.

We have to reduce the costs associated with health care. Insurance companies don't care about reducing costs. Instead, they can increase or maintain profits by demanding a higher premium from less people, leaving more and more families without health care coverage. This is not a working marketplace.

Reducing health care costs means addressing more than insurance coverage. Even here in Colorado, one of the healthiest states in the nation, the number of obese adults has more than doubled since 1990¹ and one in four of our children are either overweight or headed in that direction.² Healthy choices need to be incentives and bad health practices must be discouraged. We are an unhealthy nation and unless that changes all health care costs will continue to rise.

Sources:

¹ Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "Adult Obesity in Colorado: Results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System"; Health Watch; Nov. 2002
² Ogden CL, et al. "Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity in the United States, 1999 - 2004." JAMA. 2006;295:1549-1555