Why We Can’t Wait

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• 32,000,000 -- that’s the number of Americans who will get health insurance under the President’s plan. [Source: Congressional Budget Office]
• That’s also a little more than the populations of Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky and Arizona --- COMBINED. [Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

Over the course of our ‘Health Reform by the Numbers’ online series, we’ve highlighted many of the problems of our broken health care system to raise awareness about why we just can’t wait any longer for reform:

For the last number in the series – we wanted to showcase what you get from health insurance reform:

• It expands health insurance coverage to 32 million Americans, guaranteeing that 95% of Americans will be covered.
• It makes health insurance affordable for middle class and small businesses -- including the largest middle class tax cuts for health care in history -- reducing premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
• It strengthens consumer protections and reins in insurance company abuses.
• It gives millions of Americans the same types of private insurance choices that members of Congress will have -- through a new competitive health insurance market that keeps costs down.
• It holds insurance companies accountable to keep premiums down and prevent denials of care and coverage, including for pre-existing conditions.
• It improves Medicare benefits with lower prescription drug costs for those in the ‘donut hole,' better chronic care, free preventive care, and nearly a decade more of solvency for Medicare.
• It reduces the deficit by more than $100 billion over next ten years, and by more than one trillion dollars over the following decade; reining waste, fraud and abuse; overpayments to insurance companies and by paying for quality over quantity of care.

As President Obama says, “we must act now” and put American families and small businesses, not health insurance companies, in control of their own health care.  Help spread the word by sharing this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark' feature below.

32,000,000 is the last number in ‘Health Reform by the Numbers,' our online campaign to raise awareness about why the time is now for health insurance reform. You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Previous Numbers:

• 3
• 9
• 50-50
• 1
• 41
• 625
• 8
• 1115