Many people want you to believe that healthcare reform is much more difficult and complicated than it actually is. They want you to believe that so that the people who benefit from our current complicated insurance system continue to benefit. The fact is, though, that we already have a system in place that can cover everyone and greatly simplify healthcare in our country, and that system is called Medicare.
What I will do will be to expand Medicare to include everyone in the country who chooses to be included. This will be a huge blow to insurance companies that earn billions of dollars through health insurance premiums, but what's more important--that people in our country have full access to healthcare no matter how much they earn, or that wealthy corporations continue to add to their wealth? To me, this is not even debatable--the human beings are much more important.
It's a shame that the issue of healthcare has become a financial issue rather than a medical one. Only in America, right? By expanding Medicare, we will take advantage of systems already in place and be able to fully and clearly administer a program that will help everyone.
This isn't going to be cheap, but that's not what's important. It's also not going to be nearly as expensive as the doom-sayers want us to believe it will be. When people start inverting money that now goes to private insurers into the Medicare system, the system will be healthy. And people will be paying less than they're paying now, so they'll have more money to afford things like rent and food and child care, more money to invert into the economy to help keep businesses in other fields afloat.
Doctors and PA's and other healthcare professionals also will benefit. Within the system, their administrative costs will drop significantly as they no longer have to deal with a multitude of insurance companies and a bewildering range of what's covered and what isn't. Billing will be simpler, malpractice insurance will be cheaper, and their patients should, all in all, be much healthier as they stop avoiding those expensive trips to the doctor.
Fewer people will have to miss work because of illnesses they can't get treated; we will see a fall in the number of people who die needlessly because they delayed that visit to the doctor because they couldn't afford it.
Providing healthcare to an entire nation of people isn't just an exercise in compassion and empathy--it makes complete sense economically and socially. When we have a healthier populace, we have a more productive country; when we don't have people going bankrupt to pay medical bills, we have a stronger society in general. Most importantly, the healthy won't be paying nearly as much to support those who aren't healthy--currently, "analysis of health care spending shows that: Five percent of the population accounts for almost half (49 percent) of total health care expenses" (https://archive.ahrq.gov/research/findings/factsheets/costs/expriach/).
When we fix the system, the amount that each person spends will drop significantly. This disparity of the five percent accounting for half the expenses will continue, of course--treating cancer is an expensive proposition that doesn't affect everyone--but the costs can be absorbed in a much more practical way than the current system of raising everyone's insurance rates to pay for those who need expensive procedures.
I recently read an article about a community coming together to help to raise money for a school principal's battle against cancer. This should not have to happen in our wealthy country--a health issue should be covered for everyone, and the community can spend its money in other, more practical ways.
We have a system in place that has proved to be effective over a long period of time. Rather than re-inventing a system, let's simply expand the one that works. Over a period of two years, we will sign everyone up for this system who wants to be covered in it, and though it will cost some money, it will cost the average American less than the current system and it will cover many more people.
