Issue Position: Healthcare

Issue Position

The cost of healthcare is hitting household pocketbooks hard. Significant increases in premiums plus higher co-pays and deductibles are eating away at the paychecks of hard-working Delawareans. Increasing healthcare costs are now the biggest driver of our growing state budget. John Carney knows that while the Affordable Care Act has made important changes to our nation's healthcare system, we need to do more to make healthcare more affordable and accessible, while embracing reforms in how we deliver healthcare to bring greater value, quality, and transparency to the system.

As former chairman of Delaware's Healthcare Commission, and a long-time board member of Delaware's Cancer Consortium, John has spent years studying our state's healthcare system and finding ways to improve it. He wants to rein in our state's runaway health costs by creating policies to encourage healthier lifestyles and better management of chronic diseases among Delawareans. This will require that we continue to make changes to the way the incentives in our current system are aligned, but the result will be healthier individuals who spend less money on healthcare.

For the past decade and a half, John has been a leader in the state's fight against cancer. As governor, John would continue the work he's done on Delaware's Cancer Consortium, increasing cancer screening, reducing disparities among different demographic groups, and lowering cancer mortality rates. We've made a lot of progress, but we all have friends and family who have suffered from this terrible disease and there's much more work to do. John wants our state to embrace the Vice President's "moonshot" initiative, in response to Beau's passing, to eradicate cancer deaths by fostering greater collaboration and innovation in research. John agrees with the Vice President -- this is the responsibility of the living.

John is also deeply concerned about the opioid and heroin addiction epidemics that are devastating communities across our country, and throughout Delaware. In Congress, John supported important reforms to make government services for combating addiction more effective and better funded. As governor, John will focus on improving access to treatment options to help individuals struggling with addiction, and on innovative strategies to help prevent individuals from becoming addicted in the first place.

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