Physician's News Digest submitted questions to the Democratic and Republican candidates for U.S. Senate from New Jersey. Click here for the Republican candidates unedited answers. Mr. Casey's campaign did not provide responses to our questions. The material below is reprinted from his campaign website, BobCasey.com.

Bob Casey will work to stop draconian cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. He will be committed to fixing the Medicare Part D prescription drug mess. He will lead initiatives to make health coverage more affordable for small businesses, enhance medical technology and research, as well as expand the Medical and Family Leave Act.

Reforming Health Care for Children and Small Businesses

As Pennsylvania State Treasurer, Bob Casey announced an innovative $50 million initiative that will help Pennsylvania hospitals secure financing for new medical equipment and facility upgrades. His Hospital Enhancement Loan Program (HELP) will streamline the borrowing process and significantly reduce costs for hospitals. The Casey HELP initiative will thereby enable hospitals across the state to improve the quality of their patient care.

As Pennsylvania’s Senator in Washington, Bob Casey will be dedicated to providing the same kind of innovative leadership in federal health care policy. He has a long record of advocating for an expansion of the successful State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Throughout his career as a public servant, he has called for SCHIP to cover all uninsured children, implement aggressive outreach efforts to enroll more kids, and expand coverage to encourage immunizations.

Scores of analysts from across the political spectrum have pointed out that a good first step involves the development of a large and open purchasing pool allowing small businesses to join together and negotiate more affordable private coverage. That’s why Bob Casey supports legislation introduced by Senators Richard Durbin of Illinois and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas to create a Small Employers Health Benefits Program (SEHBP). The plan is based on the successful Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), which has provided wide benefit choices at affordable prices to federal employees for decades.

Over the last six years, the momentum behind health care reform in Washington has disappeared. The Bush administration and its partisan supporters have instead pushed for draconian cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. At the same time, they have presided over the passage and implementation of a Medicare Part D prescription drug program that has enraged seniors across the country.

Senator Bob Casey will make sure that national health care reform gets back on track. His immediate health care agenda will include the following reforms:

Fixing the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Mess

Bob Casey believes that the Medicare Part D program is fundamentally flawed and is in clear need of a complete overhaul.

The Part D legislation currently prohibits Medicare officials from negotiating lower bulk prices with the drug companies. It also continues to block the re-importation of safe, FDA-approved prescription drugs at lower prices from Canada. At the same time, the legislation lavishes extravagant taxpayer-financed incentives on the HMO industry in order to increase HMO participation in Part D and Medicare generally.

As a result, the Part D legislation could establish only a very limited and complicated structure of benefits. It is riddled with "donut holes" in coverage which require many seniors to pay for all drug costs out of their own pockets. The administration also demanded that the legislation give a privileged position to the complicated administrative and enrollment procedures of participating insurance companies and HMOs. Seniors across the country are now struggling to deal with unnecessary bureaucratic labyrinths and even being wrongly denied benefits.

As Pennsylvania’s Senator, Bob Casey will demand that Congress do the right thing and engage in comprehensive revision of its Part D legislation. He will lead the effort to demand lower prices from the drug companies and cut out the sweetheart incentives for the HMO and insurance industries. Congress can then use the revenue saved to broaden benefit coverage for our seniors. Bob Casey will make sure that Congress puts the well-being of our older Americans ahead of corporate profits.

Targeting the Working Uninsured

The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that the ranks of the uninsured have grown to 45.8 million Americans. That amounts to 18 percent of the nation’s population under the Medicare-eligible age of 65. So we are fast approaching the point where at least one in five Americans under 65 is uninsured.

Three-quarters or more of the uninsured are actually employed or have an employed family member. And the majority of working uninsured are employed by small businesses.

Less than 30 percent of low-income, full-time workers in such small firms have job-based insurance. African-American and Latino workers have higher uninsured rates.

Up to one-fifth of workers who are offered insurance now reject it because they cannot afford to pay their rising share. And too many smaller employers are abandoning the promise of offering any coverage at all.

Bob Casey understands that the rising cost of health coverage is turning into an economic crisis for the small business sector and our whole economy. Small businesses are our economy’s main source of new jobs for the last few decades. But the spiraling cost of health care is threatening to sap the energy out of our economic growth engine.

Bob Casey is convinced that immediate steps must be taken to alleviate the crisis in small business health care. He will push Congress to overcome its current indifference and focus on making health coverage more affordable for small businesses and their employees.

Using Health Information Technology to Reduce Medical Errors and Costs

Bob Casey will strongly support the kind of innovative bipartisan legislation recently introduced by Senators Hillary Clinton and Bill Frist to technologically upgrade medical systems throughout the country. The Clinton-Frist legislation will accelerate the transition of hospitals and other medical facilities to electronic record-keeping and so that then can ultimately participate in a nationwide online network for health care information. Moving to such a system could significantly reduce medical errors that now lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths and injuries each year. Estimates show that an online system of health care information could lead to medical efficiency improvements that reduce medical costs up to $200 billion a year.

Enhancing Medical Research

Advanced medical research has developed treatments and vaccines for many diseases previously thought untreatable. Bob Casey believes that funding for the National Institutes of Health should be increased - not frozen as President Bush proposes in his FY07 budget. Such a freeze could have hazardous effects on future medical breakthroughs.

Expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act

Bob Casey strongly supports the current Family and Medical Leave Act. This legislation has helped more than 50 million Americans take time off from their jobs to care for an ailing spouce, parent, or child.