“Crossing Our Lines: Working Together to Reform the U.S. Health System” is a bipartisan agreement for comprehensive health reform reached by Senators Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, and Bob Dole. It is the culmination of a year-and-a-half long effort that included strategic outreach to key health care stakeholders, a series of state-based public policy forums, and months of personal deliberations by the Leaders.

Taken together, the recommendations ensure that all Americans have affordable health coverage, while improving health care quality and reining in skyrocketing costs.

Organized around four "pillars" of health reform, its policies are intertwined, and work together to achieve more significant improvements in the health care system than could be achieved if they were considered in an isolated manner.

• Preserve and improve quality and value: demand value and safety the health care system without undermining innovation; achieve greater quality in the delivery of health care.
• Increase the availability and accessibility of affordable coverage options in a reformed insurance market: examine ways to ensure a broad range of affordable insurance policies in a market that is efficient, fair, and stable.
• Promote the individual’s role in health care coverage and cost: explore ways to encourage participation in purchasing of health care through thoughtful and meaningful financial incentives; initiate public health reforms that encourage healthier lifestyles and a commitment to wellness.
• Secure a workable financing mechanism for the nation’s health care system: determine ways to improve the equity and viability of financing mechanisms; explore options to reform the existing tax exclusion for health coverage; increase efficiency through modernization and streamlining of health care administration.

Compare the health care plan put forth by Senators Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, and Bob Dole to other plans here.