March 15, 2010

INDIANAPOLIS - Congressman André Carson took a page from fellow Hoosier David Letterman's playbook and released a Top Ten list of facts that are sure to go unspoken at today's anti-health-care-reform rally at the Statehouse.

10) According to a report released just yesterday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, failing to pass health reform could result in families seeing their premiums and out-of-pocket health care costs skyrocket 34 percent by 2015 and 79 percent by 2020.

9) Employer-based health-care coverage will become increasingly expensive for workers. Premiums for both single and family policies could more than double by 2020, increasing from $4,800 to $10,300 for single policies, and from $12,100 to $25,600 for family policies.

8) Businesses will see large increases in premium costs, from an estimated $430 billion in 2010 to $851 billion in 2020, a 98 percent increase.

7) The loss of health coverage can happen to anyone. In 2009, an average of 625 people every hour lost their health insurance coverage.

6) Our deficit problem is our health care crisis. Today, one out of every six dollars in our economy is spent on health care. If nothing is done, that ratio will jump to one in every three dollars within the next 30 years.
7) By passing health-care reform, we can put our budget and economy on a more stable path. The President's health-reform plan will reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years - and about $1 trillion over the second decade - by cutting government overspending and reining-in waste, fraud and abuse.

4) Health-care reform gives American families, individuals and small business owners more control over their own health care by giving them more consumer protections and shifting power away from the insurance companies.

3) Passing reform will create a new competitive health insurance market that will give tens of millions of Americans the exact same insurance choices that members of Congress have.

2) More than 31 million Americans who do not get health coverage today will be able to purchase quality affordable health insurance under the reform plan.

1) Eight people every minute in this nation are denied health coverage, charged a higher rate or otherwise discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition. Health-care reform would end this terrible practice of denying coverage to those who need it most.