Health Care :: New York Governor Spitzer pledges to reform health care system

“In my State of the State Message, I pledged to reform our health care system to make health care affordable for each person, family, business, and for government”, said New York Governor Eliot Spitzer at the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer proposes fundamental changes to reform and restructure New York’s health care system – decreasing costs while increasing coverage. He spoke “Our reforms will not only save taxpayers billions of dollars, but, most importantly, will lower the cost of health care while improving patient outcomes”.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer highlighted the problems in New York’s health care system like – spending on unused hospital and nursing home beds, excessive levels of Graduate Medical Education support, subsidized labor agreements, or soaring pharmaceutical drug costs, etc.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer suggested his plans to reform the New York’s health care system –

– a new Patient-First Agenda to lower the cost of health care
– to provide access to health insurance to all 400,000 of our uninsured children
– to remove the bureaucratic hurdles that prevent vulnerable New Yorkers from getting on and staying on Medicaid
– to develop a plan for affordable, universal health insurance for all New Yorkers
– to reform Medicaid and the delivery system it supports
– to impose a freeze on the Medicaid rates paid to nursing homes and hospitals and a partial freeze on managed care plans
– not to pay for graduate medical residents who don’t exist
– not to underwrite inadequate reimbursement paid by Medicare and private health insurance companies
– not to pay for out-of-control pharmaceutical costs
– to strengthen the State’s Preferred Drug List
– to buy health care in the right settings, at the highest standards and at the best price
– to expand the managed long term care program which has proven so successful in managing and coordinating long term care needs
– to drive the implementation of health information technology, vital to improving quality, reducing bureaucratic barriers and saving money
– to increase efforts to ferret out Medicaid fraud


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