Issue Position: Healthcare

Issue Position

Health care should be organized around the principle of delivering quality care in a cost-effective manner. Physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers should be supported and encouraged to deliver care based on this organizing principle.

Hawaiʻi has one of the highest rates of health care insurance coverage in the nation due to our employer-mandated health care insurance law, the Prepaid Health Care Act. In Hawaiʻi, 93 percent of all residents have health care insurance. I will focus on securing coverage for the remainder of the population.

I will seek to correct an error of the current Governor, who failed to request regulatory flexibility for the requirements of the federal Affordable Care Act that weaken Hawaiʻi's Prepaid Health Care Law. Our Hawaiʻi Health Connector received a $205 million grant from the federal government, but has been a disaster. The current Governor appointed the Connector's Board, but he failed to put together a team that could effectively design and implement it. The Connector has had major problems from the beginning. It was unworkable on the day it was scheduled to start, and, nine months later, the Connector has enrolled less than 1 percent of the population. There are better alternatives to covering Hawaiʻi's uninsured residents.

Health Action Plan:

Shift the focus of health care toward providing quality health care that is affordable to all of Hawaiʻi's residents through patient-centered medical homes, community outreach teams, and quality improvement initiatives.
Improve access to medical education by expanding student loan forgiveness programs to graduates who commit to work in areas that face health care practitioner shortages
My track record: I led passage of legislation that:

Ensures continued community-based primary care for the uninsured, underinsured, or Medicaid recipients by helping the community health center system to remain financially viable and stable in the face of the increasing needs of these populations (Act 8, 2008)
Required home care agencies to be licensed for the health, safety and welfare of clients, which overrode the governor's veto (Act 21, 2009)
Protected Neighbor Island hospitals by prohibiting planned substantial reduction or elimination of direct patient care services at any facility unless an initial determination is made that critical and emergency services will not be reduced or eliminated (Act 182, 2009 became law without governor's signature)
Increased healthcare access by establishing telemedicine for licensed physicians to care for patients (Act 20 became law without the governor's signature, 2009)

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