In the last several Presidential elections, American's health care system was a hot button issue. As mentioned in our story AS MAINE GOES, President Bush has come up with a health care proposal. We present the President's Fact Sheet below.

In a speech at the Medical College of Wisconsin, President Bush outlined a comprehensive health care agenda that improves health security for all Americans by building on the best features of American health care.

Our health care system can provide the best care in the world, but rising costs and loss of control to government and health plan bureaucrats threaten to keep patients from getting state-of-the-art care. To create a health care system that puts the needs of patients first, the President proposed steps to: (1) help all Americans get affordable health care coverage; (2) help patients get high-quality care every time; and (3) develop new treatments to keep patients healthy and prevent complications from diseases and strengthen the health care safety net.

The President will back up this agenda with more than $300 billion in proposed funding.

BACKGROUND ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S HEALTH CARE AGENDA

President Bush outlined a comprehensive vision for helping all Americans benefit from the potential of American health care in the 21st century. The President's health care agenda is designed to improve the accessibility, affordability and accountability of health care for every American -- and to make sure that American health care keeps getting better.

Ensuring Every American Can Choose Affordable Health Care That Meets Their Needs: The President believes that we should trust patients, working with health care professionals, to decide which treatment is best for them. Everyone should be able to choose a health care plan that meets their needs at a price they can afford. When people have good choices, health plans have to compete for their business -- which means higher quality and better care. Many Americans enjoy access to good choices in employer-sponsored health care plans, but many others do not have good coverage options or are in danger of losing them. The President proposes to address this problem through over $117 billion in initiatives to make good health care coverage more available and affordable:

Expanded Health Accounts: The President's plan lifts the excessive restrictions on Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs), by lowering the deductible requirements to levels that are increasingly common in private health insurance plans and to allow preventive care coverage. These changes will allow many more Americans to set up tax-free accounts to protect themselves from high out-of-pocket costs. The President also proposed expanding Flexible Savings Accounts (FSAs), to allow employees to roll over as much as $500 in unspent health care contributions to an FSA to use the following year or to contribute to their 401(k) plan. The budgetary cost of these proposals to help families manage their medical costs is $14 billion over 10 years.

Health Credits: The President's budget proposes $89 billion in new health credits to make private health insurance more affordable for low- and middle-income American families who do not have employer-subsidized insurance. The credits would be worth up to $1000 for individuals and $3000 for families, would be available when people need them to pay their insurance premiums, and do not depend on taxes owed. The Administration will work with states to give many Americans the option of using the health credits through state-sponsored purchasing pools, to help ensure that they too have access to a broad range of affordable coverage options. The credits will enable 6 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured during a year to get coverage, and will help many more who are struggling to pay for their own health insurance with little or no government help. The President also supports legislation to provide $15 billion in health credits to provide quick help for workers who have lost their jobs during the recession. The credits would pay 60 percent of the cost of keeping their health care coverage and would assist over 4 million displaced workers.

Better Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) : The Bush Administration will continue to work with states and Congress to provide innovative coverage in these important government programs, including health care coverage options. In just the past year, the Administration has already worked with states to expand innovative Medicaid and S-CHIP coverage for almost 2 million more Americans.

The President's plans for dealing with the MEDICARE crisis are also laid out in White House Fact Sheet. You can read about health care saving accounts and other proposals in much greater detail in the President's Proposals for Health Security.