Two of Wisconsin's health-care reform organizations, Wisconsin Health Project and AFL-CIO, met Monday to address health-care access and affordability at a seminar titled ""Mending Wisconsin's Broken Health Care System.""
Director of WHP David Riemer said Gov. Jim Doyle's health-care reform proposals are good but ""it's important that we go even beyond the proposals.""
Riemer said around half a million people in Wisconsin do not have health-care insurance and many people are forced into the decision of ""either not getting the care or getting the care and having no way to pay for it.""
WHP's proposal to improve health care is to still use insurance companies, but pressure them to lower their prices through competition. Reimer said this will make it easier for people to join lower cost plans.
Concerning AFL-CIO, which represents union workers, Riemer said both organizations have ""two different approaches, but they aim for the same end and try to achieve the same goal.""
During his re-election campaign, Doyle pushed health care as one of his top priorities.
In his State of the State address, Doyle stressed the importance of making a ""bold effort"" in Wisconsin to improve health-care system reforms.
He expressed concern for the fact that ""incomes haven't kept up"" with increasing health-care spending in recent years.
The main problems with health insurance in Wisconsin, according to Doyle, are that many people do not have it, employers are having a hard time providing it, and that the number of children without insurance is rising.
Doyle's approach to fixing these problems is to strengthen BadgerCare Plus, a plan to ""reduce cost, improve quality and expand access to affordable health-care coverage.""
