James McCormick from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation stressed the importance of "light touch, low costpreventative interventions" in the community to avoid hospitalisation, as emergency care for over 70's was four times more expensive than the entire bill for free care for the elderly in Scotland.
The law establishes a staged series of reforms over several years, including banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, forbidding insurers from setting a dollar limit on health coverage payouts, and requiring them to cover preventative care at no additional cost to consumers.
He also called for a deeper commitment to basic education across the continent, where school enrollment levels are dangerously low in some regions, and called on western pharmaceutical manufacturers to work to find cost-effective ways to provide preventative medicines and vaccines to curb the high rates of AIDS and tuberculosis through much of the continent.