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Aetna Joins Effort To Advance Health Care Reform


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oins nation’s largest employers calling for meaningful federal and state action

HARTFORD, Conn., Aetna (NYSE: ΑET) has joined with nearly 40 other leading businesses in forming the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform (CAHR). In making the announcement in Washington, leaders of the group discussed the urgent need to begin a bi-partisan dialogue with the goal of addressing the uninsured.

“The most pressing issue we face as a nation is health care access and affordability,” said Aetna chairman and CEO Ronald A. Williams. “Ensuring access to high quality, affordable health care should be our top domestic priority, and the dialogue we have started brings business and legislative leaders together, which is important to finding the right solution. Aetna believes the development of a strong public/private partnership, where business brings real world experience in innovation and marketplace expertise, will lead to the best market-based solution.”

Aetna has been active in developing both business solutions and advancing specific public policy objectives with the goal of having a positive impact on health care in America. An acknowledged leader in consumer-directed health care and the first national insurer to offer a consumer-directed plan in 2001, Aetna is also leading the way in health care transparency. Transparency is gaining momentum as a driving force in the health industry as employers, regulators and the medical community work in collaboration toward a more transparent system. Since launching its transparency program in 2005, the company now offers physician-specific clinical quality and efficiency information to members in 11 states and the District of Columbia.

More recently, Aetna was one of the first Fortune 100 employers - and the first health plan — to endorse the Department of Health and Human Services’ “Four Cornerstones of Value-Driven Health Care.” The company has strongly supported the ideas of using health information technology, and providing quality and pricing information to promote the quality and efficiency of health care.

Aetna has also been active in advocating for an individual coverage requirement, as one of the most effective tools available for expanding access to health care and helping to provide assistance to those who cannot afford coverage. As the first national insurer to call for an individual coverage requirement in 2005, Aetna actively supports legislation based on this common-sense solution which is now a feature in at least 8 states now debated reform.



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