What They’re Watching: Senator Gene Davis

Sen. Gene Davis is a member of the Health Reform Task Force. He joins us in this edition of “What They’re Watching” to discuss affordability and access.

In health care it really is all about the access issue. I believe that all people have the right to access quality health care. Of course, the battle is always the affordability. The main thing that we need to look at in health care reform and that I look at on a continual basis, is basically the three legs of that stool: access, quality, and affordability. 

We have a lot to do in all three of those areas. We need to make sure that we have a good, firm, and stable health care system. And, really, everybody says that it is broken, everybody wants patients to change instead of wanting the system to change. The Affordable Care Act really gave us the opportunity to make some of those changes. 

For example, mandating everybody to have coverage–that saves money, that creates affordability. I believe that wrap around care that we are doing with the AOCs and others that are under the umbrella of the ACA are things that really serve the patient. And, this is creating access for more people. Actually, if we can prevent some of the diseases before they occur I think there are natural savings there.