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Rick Santorum consistently supports medicine's efforts to provide quality care - Part 2
Fighting Lawsuit Abuse
* As Conference Chairman, Senator Santorum was instrumental in pushing liability reform high on the Senate’s agenda. Without Rick Santorum's outspoken leadership, the political viability of legal reforms could potentially wither on the vine, particularly since Bob Casey, Jr. opposes virtually all legal reforms.
* Rick introduced the Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Access to Care Act. New data from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) 2006 Survey on Professional Liability indicates that 69.8% of America's ob-gyns have made one or more changes to their practice, like eliminating obstetrics, reducing high-risk patients and surgery or increasing C-section births, as a result of the affordability and/or availability of professional liability insurance. Reforms are vitally needed to ensure women’s access to quality care, but a filibuster in the Senate, which Bob Casey, Jr. would have supported, prevented passage of this important measure.
* Rick co-sponsored the Medical Care Access Protection Act, to decrease frivolous lawsuits, and ensure that injured patients, not trial lawyers, receive fair compensation by placing reasonable limits on non-economic damages and a sliding scale for attorneys' fees.
* Rick sponsored the Community Health Center Volunteer Physician Protection Act and the Expanding Charitable and Volunteer Opportunities Act, which protect volunteer physicians who serve in community health centers.
* Due to his support for medical liability reform, Sen. Santorum has been identified by personal injury lawyers across the country as their #1 target. To that end, lawyers and law firms have funded the major part of his opponent's campaign, contributing over $2.4 million, making Bob Casey, Jr. the second-highest recipient of lawyer and law firm political funding in the nation, second only to Hillary Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics at www.OpenSecrets.org.
Health Care Accessibility
* Rick has a meaningful plan to help cover the uninsured, including enhancing and improving Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) – tax free, portable accounts that empower consumers to make informed choices and take control over their own healthcare expenses.
* Rick introduced the Health Care Tax Relief for the Uninsured Act to provide tax credits to small businesses or uninsured Americans to purchase insurance or health savings accounts.
* Rick is a cosponsor of the Small Business Health Fairness Act of 2005, which would create Small Business Health Plans and establish Association Health Plans (AHP’s), to allow small business employers to join together to obtain better insurance rates.
* Rick supports the Healthy Communities Access Program, which funds community health centers, benefiting about 10.3 million of our nation’s low-income, uninsured and under-insured people by providing effective and efficient primary and preventive health care services.
Support for Medicare
* Rick is a leader in the effort to provide fair Medicare payment for physicians, to prevent the scheduled severe cuts, and help doctors keep pace with the rising cost of staying in practice. Sen. Santorum has supported every key vote backed by the AMA and other supporters in Congress committed to fixing the flawed reimbursement formula used by Medicare.
* The Senate passed, with Rick Santorum's support and leadership, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, which provides Medicare beneficiaries with a prescription drug benefit and expanded health plan options. He also supports maintaining American productionof drugs to guarantee that the FDA's high quality standards are met. The Act also improves rural access to health care by increasing funding for rural hospitals.
* Rick worked to strengthen and enhance prescription drug coverage for Pennsylvanians in PACE and PACENET and cosponsored legislation that would expand access to Medicare home health care services in rural areas.
Support for Safety, Research and Technology
* Rick supported a budget resolution in 1998 which called for doubling the NIH budget over a period of five years, raising our investment from $13.7 billion in 1998 to $27.2 billion in 2003. Rick recognizes the important role the National Institutes of Health (NIH) plays in supporting biomedical research and development at leading research institutions nationwide, and supports federal funding for basic, clinical, and translational research within the NIH.
* Rick voted for the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act to increase patient safety and improve the quality of health care.
* Rick supports the Access to Emergency Medical Services Act to protect patients' access to medical care in an emergency.
* Rick authored and has successfully enacted provisions of his Kidney Care Quality and Improvement Act of 2005 so that patients with kidney failure have access to lifesaving dialysis treatment.
* Rick authored and has successfully enacted provisions of his Colon Cancer Screen for Life Act to provide colonoscopy as a covered Medicare Benefit.
* Rick is the author and champion of the bipartisan Combating Autism Act of 2005, which would authorize $860 million over five years to combat autism through research, screening, intervention, and education.
* Rick cosponsored the Ronald Reagan Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Act, to fund Alzheimer’s research and increase public education about prevention.
* Rick Santorum has worked for the last several years to address funding imbalances that prevent accurate detection and treatment for Lyme Disease, America’s most common tick-borne illness
* Rick is a member of the Congressional Medical Technology Caucus, to promote advances in medical technology.
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