BCC Breakfast Club Candidate Forum
Good
morning, I’m Jordan Cooper, I was born and raised right here in Bethesda, and
I’m running to represent you in the Maryland House of Delegates.
Pocketbooks
I’m
running because there’s an issue going in our state that no one is talking
about and it’s hitting the pocketbooks of every person in this room. I’m
talking about the drastic rise of health insurance premiums.
Increasing Premiums
Over
the past four years premiums have increased about 50% on average in Maryland
for CareFirst plans and deductibles have been increasing 150% on average
throughout the state. We need to do better than that and we can do better.
Government Inaction
Unfortunately
our governor and our legislature haven’t been controlling these cost increases
that are hitting each and every one of us in our pocketbooks. We’re all paying
for it. I’m sure many of you in this room have experienced some sort of
increase in their healthcare costs. I have heard many stories from our
neighbors in Bethesda who have seen their health insurance premiums increase by
hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per month. I know that it’s hitting
my family and chances are it’s hitting your family and the families of everyone
you know.
State Could Control Costs
Our
healthcare premiums are not increasing due to market forces; we could be
controlling these out of control healthcare cost increases because in Maryland
the state controls healthcare prices.
We Matter
We can
do something about this. We are the most well educated and powerful constituency
in the state of Maryland. We are the main source of tax revenue for our state
and those dollars go a long way in Annapolis. Our voices will be heard if we
send a healthcare policy expert to the Maryland House of Delegates to demand
change.
Healthcare Expert
I have worked at Johns Hopkins, Kaiser
Permanente, and DC Medicaid. I have worked on health policy in the Maryland
House of Delegates for two years. And I have a master’s degree in health policy
from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Send me to
Annapolis and I’ll work to cut your health insurance premiums in half.
Healthcare is Complicated
Healthcare
is complicated. I know. But complicated or not, at the end of the day we’re
being stuck with an ever-increasing bill and the crazy thing is that we can cut
it in half. There’s no need to continue overpaying for our health insurance
premiums.
We Pay for Everyone’s ER
Visits
Every
time an uninsured individual comes into the ER in Baltimore City (and there
were 1.8 million ER visits in Maryland last year) the State raises the prices
for everything else in that hospital. As a result CareFirst increases its
premiums for everyone else throughout the state, including us in Bethesda.
Hospitals and Insurance
Companies are Profiting at Our Expense
And
guess how much corporate income taxes these same hospitals and health insurance
companies pay? Zero. They’re tax exempt in exchange for providing care to the
uninsured, which they then in turn use as an excuse to increase their prices
and our premiums.
Solutions
We’re
already paying for our uninsured through the ER in the most inefficient and
expensive way possible. We need to cover our uninsured through a public option
that will begin by requiring 500,000 public employees to obtain a basic
healthcare plan in one large risk pool that we’ll use to gain economies of
scale and to negotiate down drug and medical device prices. We need to expand
our price setting authority from the hospital to the doctor’s clinic. And we
need to think if hospitals and health insurance companies that compensate their
executives with multi-million dollar salaries really need to continue to be tax
exempt.
No One is Talking About This
No
one is talking about these hits that we’re taking to our pocketbook; not our
governor and not our legislators. And by the way, did you know that one third
of our legislators weren’t even elected- they were appointed- and that
perpetuates the problem.
Make Our Voices Heard
We
need to make our voices heard, we need to do it with this election, and we need
to do it with my campaign. Send me to the House to cut your health insurance
premiums in half.
Thank you.