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Democratic Presidential Candidate Clinton discusses health care issues in speech at conference sponsored by Senior group

Sep 05, 2007--Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday during a speech at a conference in Washington, D.C., said that U.S. seniors are "not invisible" to her and that as president she would seek to reduce long-term care costs, CQ HealthBeat reports.

At the conference, sponsored by the Alliance of Retired Americans, Clinton said that many seniors currently cannot afford the cost of long-term care.

She also said that she would seek to end the use of fraudulent practices in which companies increase costs or deny benefits to seniors who have purchased long-term care insurance policies. "We must unravel the deception of fraudsters and what they do to people," Clinton said.

She said seniors should have the ability to file lawsuits against companies that misuse their personal information and proposed to establish a national telecommunications database that would help protect seniors from fraudulent practices (Bartolf, CQ HealthBeat, 9/4).

In addition, Clinton said that CMS should have the ability to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies on prices for medications under the Medicare prescription drug benefit and that U.S. residents should have the ability to purchase lower-cost medications from Canada and other industrialized nations.

Clinton also said that her health care proposal reduces "costs for everybody, improves quality (of treatment) for everybody and covers everybody" (Hess, CongressDaily, 9/5). In May, Clinton announced a proposal to reduce health care costs during a speech at George Washington University, and last month, she announced a proposal to improve quality (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 8/24). She plans to announce a proposal to expand health insurance to all residents in the next few weeks (CQ HealthBeat, 9/4).

A webcast of Clinton's speech is available onlinee at kaisernetwork.org.