Parkinson's Disease: Principles for Health Care Reform

With President Obama’s dramatic address to Congress now behind us – and the public reaction, both supportive and critical, rolling in from all quarters – it is now clear that health care reform will be the main domestic policy issue throughout the fall (and perhaps beyond).

At my own organization, where our focus is the one million or so people who live with Parkinson’s and their families, we have received numerous expressions of concern and confusion from website visitors and constituents (and readers of our last blog post) about the meaning of various legislative proposals for health care reform, and their implications for the interests of the Parkinson’s community.

As a non-partisan organization, we support a balanced, bipartisan and comprehensive approach to the needs of the people we serve. We don’t know what the final form of the health care reform legislation will be, but we do think we know something about what should be in that legislation, whatever form it may take, if people with Parkinson’s are to be well served. We believe that these provisions, which we express on our website, www.pdf.org, as a list of “Principles,” transcend the specific and often contentious issues of government plan vs. private insurance, or Republican vs. Democrat, and are in this respect “non-partisan” in the true meaning of the term.

We encourage you to take a look at, Parkinson's Disease: Principles for Health Care Reform.

We hope they will provide some common language for our community as they participate in the national conversation. And let’s hear your reflections and reactions!