Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius held a conference call on health care reform for regional media early this afternoon. Part of the purpose of the conference call was to promote reports released by HHS on the status quo of health care in each of the fifty states. After her opening remarks Secretary Sebelius took questions from media in on the conference call.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius: Good afternoon everybody. And, um, I appreciate you joining us today. Um, as you know, here in Washington people are working hard to push forward health reform and we know that there's some urgency about this from citizens across this country.
Um, since two thousand health insurance premiums have doubled and health care premiums are growing three times faster than wages. But unfortunately quality of care is going down as those costs continue to rise. So, even with, for people who have, uh, access to health care, uh, all it takes is a stroke of bad luck to become one of the nearly forty-six million uninsured or the millions who have health care and are having trouble affording it.
Today, uh, at the Department of Health and Human Services we've released fifty new reports on the health care status quo in every state around the country. The new reports are available on our web site, www.healthreform.gov. And they pretty clearly outline the challenges that we have. Um, the reports include statistics on the percentage of residents in each state without insurance, the increase in the costs of premiums, and the overall quality for health care in each state. And they use some of the most current data available.
Uh, unfortunately the reports are a clear demonstration that there are problems with health care in every state. Whether they're rural, urban, East coast, West coast, it really doesn't matter. The health crisis impacts all of America. The additional reports out today are from our Agency for Health Research and Quality. And frankly states get a pretty mixed review for the quality of care they provide.
Uh, these are more than just numbers and facts, more than statistics on a page. They represent real people and families in states across the country who are struggling. Uh, what we know is every day in America families are being crushed by the high cost of health care that threatens their financial stability, leaves them exposed to higher premiums and deductibles, and puts them at risk for possible loss of health insurance as employers struggle to provide adequate health coverage.
So now Americans are demanding reform that protects what works and fixes what's broken. And in Congress, um, a number of members of the House and Senators from both sides of the aisle are working hard to make reform a reality. We were encouraged that just yesterday a bipartisan group of leading Senators, including the top Democrat and the top Republican on the Finance Committee, Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley, recommitted to working together on health reform this year.
So I'm confident that we are gonna get a bill passed and to the President's desk. And the statistics that we're releasing today should help to inform people about the serious challenges that we face and why we can't wait for reform to happen.
Um, again the reports are on our web site healthreform.gov. And they are a state by state look at what's going on in quality and cost. So with that I'd, I'd be willing to, um, answer some questions. I think we have about...
Wednesday afternoon I took part in a media and blogger conference call with Jared Bernstein, the chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden. The subject for the briefing and questions which followed was the "impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan".
Our previous coverage of Jared Bernstein's opening remarks:
The final eighteen minutes of the conference call:
Jill Miller Zimon themoderatevoice.com: Thank you for taking my call. Um, I am in Ohio and I had a question regarding what remains in the package for home buyers. Um, I don't know, I'm guessing, uh, you may be familiar with Congresswomen Kaptur's, um, suggestion about individuals staying in their homes when they're facing foreclosure and demanding that the mortgages be produced. Are you familiar with that?
Jared Bernstein: Uh, you know what I'm famil..., I'm, I'm not, I'm not sure and I'm sort of actually paging through some stuff [crosstalk] on the conference while we speak.
Jill Miller Zimon: It's been making its rounds, she...[crosstalk]
Jared Bernstein: I mean the thing I'm familier with is the, uh, that was in the Senate version of the bill was a new home buyer's tax credit. And I don't know, uh, and I sh..., I sh..., I want to check whether that. I'll, I'll check and see if that, if that's still, still made it, how that ended up in conference. Uh, [crosstalk] but oh, actually that's gone I see. Uh, oh, oh wait, is that right? ...Um. Actually, I'm not sure about that. [crosstalk] I take that back on the housing part. I have, I have to learn more about it. This, this thing was signed just a few minutes ago...
Yesterday afternoon I took part in a media and blogger conference call with Jared Bernstein, the chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden. The subject for the briefing and questions which followed was the "impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan".
Our previous coverage of Jared Bernstein's opening remarks:
Adam Siegel - getenergysmartnow.com: Uh, thank you very much for doing this call. Much appreciated. Uh, looking to [garbled] and focus on energy, global warming, as well as economic issues and the intersection of all of them, uh, when we're looking at the limited news so far we see that the, uh, deal continues the slashing of a lot of the things that might be considered long term infrastructure such as aid for school construction [garbled] even while looking to try to get this bill passed are you already starting to lay the ground work for trying to recapture many of the good things from the House bill that don't seem to have made it through the conference committee?
Jared Bernstein: Well, and I, I have to be mindful of the fact that I am, uh, uh, one of the team, uh, some of these folks are on their way back from the, the capitol now. Uh, so let me speak broadly in answer to your question. I can't tell you we plan to go back to the well tomorrow to, uh, get back some of the things that were our original preferences. But, I, I can tell you that they, they were our original preferences and I can tell you that, you know, my understanding of some of the negotiations were that, that some of the opponents of pieces that were in this legislation were not saying we're against, uh, school construction, we're against, uh, uh, fiscal relief to states. uh, we're, we're, against, uh, expanding some of the health care. They were saying we're against putting them in a, uh, stimulus or a recovery package, uh, that is intended to spend out quickly and, uh, um, well, fulfill the kinds of stimulative economic goals I talked about earlier. So, um, uh, my view, uh, is that, uh, no windows are closed when it comes to, uh, these good ideas...
This afternoon I took part in a media and blogger conference call with Jared Bernstein, the chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden. The subject for the briefing and questions which followed was the "impacts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan":
Jared Bernstein:...Thanks very much...I'm a, I'm really glad to be talking, uh, to this group. I talk to lots of different groups. And while I, I can't see you, uh, I know you're out there. And, uh, I'm glad of that. Um, folks may know, uh, some of my work. I was, uh, blogging for the Huffington Post before I, I came here.
Um, I'm just gonna quickly talk about, uh, where we are, uh, how I think we got here and how I believe, uh, this plan, ah, is, uh, critical to getting us back on track, uh, economically. Um, where we are is at best told from an economist's perspective, and that is my curse, uh, by reflecting on some jobs numbers. Uh, last month, uh, we lost six hundred thousand jobs. Uh, that is the worst month for job losses in over three decades. And that got a lot of attention, because that kind of number just kinda, uh, screams out for precisely the kind of attention it got. The, the thing that maybe didn't quite land as much in people's thinking was the fact that the prior two months were revised such that they were almost just as bad. So over the past three months we've lost close to two million jobs. That's a little bit less than a per cent of the, uh, of the, uh, employment out there in, in the country. And this is a, uh, a very serious, uh, uh, acceleration in the rate at which the job market is, is declining. Now, you know, when you're talkin' about it at that level it sounds, you know, fairly antiseptic. But the President, the Vice President have been traveling to venues where unemployment is, uh, uh, a lot higher than it was a year ago and, and in the case of Elkhart, Indiana and Fort Myer, Florida, basically in double digits. And these are folks who are facing, um, this tough economy on the ground. Uh, it's, uh, as many of you know, and it's one of the things that I think put our administration here in the first place, there are lots of middle class families that were having trouble even when the economy was expanding.Well now it's contracting, and, uh, those folks don't have a lot to fall back on. So this is, this is, this is very difficult times...
