"Lack of health insurance acts like a cancer"   MP3  0:35
Dr. David Carlyle, 515-239-4753, is a family doctor at the McFarland Clinic in Ames. 

For physicians like myself who see it daily the lack of health insurance acts like a cancer spreading, infiltrating, metastasizing throughout our society. Even patients with insurance, working for companies that you would consider have top notch insurance, now when they have a disease like ALS, Logarakis disease now have less benefits such as home health care coverage because those companies having to negotiate away those benefits because of higher premiums. 

"We want all children in Iowa to be covered"  MP3  0:34
Commission Co-Chair Ro Foege, State Representative from Mount Pleasant 

What we ended up with is a blueprint that includes a shared responsibility. A shared responsibility between patients, providers and payers and that employers and employees and the state government we are all in this together in making sure that everybody in this state has healthcare. I especially pleased that that we have come out of this commission with a recommendation that we want all children in Iowa to be covered with healthcare and have health care.

"This is an extraordinary step"  MP3  0:46
Commission Co-Chair Jack Hatch, State Senator from Des Moines.

Today’s announcement was the approval of the commission on the entire proposal of the universal health care, medical homes, cost containment. What this commission did was, for the very first time, create and approve and submitted to the legislature a plan to achieve universal health care, with medical home for preventive care, a system for telemedicine and electronic tele-records, and specific strategies for cost containment. We have never had that before. There has never been a proposal from a legislative citizen commission that has said that. Individual legislatures said it, politicians have said it, this is an extraordinary step.