WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the House and Senate continue their deliberations over health care reform, two recent reports from the Center for American Progress show that reform will create up to 4 million jobs and address racial inequalities in the nation’s health care system.
In “New Jobs Through Better Health Care,” authors David M. Cutler, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Neeraj Sood,Associate Professor at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, show that health care reform will create up to 4 million more jobs than would be created without reform. Specifically:
- Health care reform could increase the number of jobs in the United States by about 250,000 to 400,000 per year over the coming decade.
- By 2016, reform will create more than 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing and nearly 900,000 jobs in services.
Download the full report (pdf)
In “Equal Health Care for All,” CAP Visiting Fellow Lesley Russell found that the health care reform bill would improve health care for communities of color by:
- Expanding health coverage and providing financial assistance to help those with lower incomes purchase coverage
- Improving access to primary care and “medical homes” to ensure a regular source of care and care coordination
- Focusing on disease prevention and health promotion
- Reauthorizing the Indian Health Care Improvement Act
- Enhancing the quality of health care services
- Improving the diversity, cultural competence, and distribution of the health care workforce
- Expanding access to community health centers
- Collecting data to better measure the effectiveness of these initiatives
Read the full report (pdf)
To speak with the authors, please contact Jason Rahlan at 202.481.8132 or [email protected].
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