Posted: September 11, 2009

Nancy Davenport-Ennis
Founder and CEO,
National Patient Advocate Foundation and Patient Advocate Foundation

In 1996, Davenport-Ennis, a cancer survivor, founded two organizations. The National Patient Advocate Foundation is a policy organization that seeks to improve access to care through regulatory and policy initiatives at the state and federal levels. The Patient Advocate Foundation is a 501(c)3, direct-patient-services organization headquartered in Newport News. In 2008, Davenport-Ennis was selected by Yoplait and Susan G. Komen for the Cure as a Yoplait champion for selflessly fighting breast cancer as well as joining the Stand Up 2 Cancer Advisory Council, a national movement to end cancer. In 2005 she received the Women in Business Achievement Award presented by Anthem and BusinessWeek. She is a graduate of Campbell University.

What is one aspect of the current system that works well and shouldn't be changed?

One feature of the health care system that works well is a program to insure at-risk children through CHIP. While we still have 12 million uninsured children, those who are enrolled in CHIP have access to health care when they need it with referrals to specialists available if serious or chronic illnesses are diagnosed.

What is the biggest problem with the current system in need of change?

The issue of elimination of pre-existing conditions is absolutely necessary to assure that all people have access to insurance and that in a nation of free enterprise, we do not lock people into jobs simply to maintain health care. One-third of our population has at least one chronic disease that would restrict their insurability if they lost their insurance today as do 20 percent of our school-age children. Our nation needs this benefit delivered to them in 2010.

Affordability is a central element of reform, capping out-of-pocket expenses to reduce our radical race to bankruptcy driven by uncontrollable health care expenses for more than 65 percent of all families devastated by serious illnesses.