Our last post on the major parties’ prescriptions for health care caused quite an uproar because it did not include the Green Party and Libertarian plans.
Our bad, and thank you so much for your insistence that we get the story straight.
The market-based reforms to our unequal, unaffordable, inaccessible, incomprehensible healthcare system proposed by the two major parties are not the only answers. In fact, they’re not even answers at all! Market-based reforms simply reinforce the established inequality in our corporate healthcare system, with all its perverse incentives and distorted relationships.
What is most important to our health? That we have immediate access to the doctors we trust, and to the treatments that our trusted doctors recommend.
But that’s not what we have. To benefit their political campaign war chests, our political leaders have welcomed corporate CEO’s, shareholders and other financial stakeholders to join us in our doctors’ offices.
And so today’s health care is no longer about our needs. It’s about preserving the interests of corporate stakeholders and the politicians they support. This is the tragic reality that the mainstream media, the major political parties and corporate healthcare players don’t want us to realize.
With this mind, let’s take a look at the Other Presidential Candidates’ Prescriptions for Health Care:
Get the facts about Jill Stein’s Healthcare Plan
The information about Jill Stein’s plan is from her campaign website. Please read the entire plan because space does not permit us to include all the points. We are only going to review 5 points in this article.
Establish an improved, universal “Medicare for All” single-payer program to provide everyone with quality health care. Include mental health, dental, and vision care. No co-pays, premiums or deductibles. No restrictions based on pre-existing illness, employment, immigration status, age, or any other status. Eliminate the cancer of health insurance, which adds $400 billion in administrative costs while reducing access to care.
- Negotiate prices for medications on a bulk purchase basis.
- Eliminate health disparities in communities of color and low-income communities. Ensure easy access to health care in communities of color, including community health centers.
- Allow full access to contraceptive and reproductive care.
- Prioritize preventive health care, including physical activity, healthy nutrition and pollution prevention.
What would be the impact of Jill Stein’s plan?
It would bring the US healthcare system into the 21st century, at the same level as healthcare systems in Canada, Australia, France, Taiwan and many other modern nations. It would establish a national public health insurance program that would focus on meeting people’s needs rather than on corporate profits.
It would promote equality of healthcare access for all our communities and for women, while prioritizing wellness.
And it would save millions of dollars currently being wasted on worthless insurance paperwork, CEO salaries, shareholder dividends and the like.
Jill Stein’s plan, however, would require a strategy for an orderly transition from private health insurance which is not detailed on the campaign website.
Get the facts about Gary Johnson’s Healthcare Plan
Health care is not even included as an issue on the Johnson-Weld Campaign Website. So details of Gary Johnson’s plan are drawn from Gary Johnson on Health Care, published by OnTheIssues.org. Please read the entire article because space does not permit us to include everything he said. We are only going to address 5 of his points:
- Repeal Obamacare and Bush’s Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit.
- Finance health care with a combination of catastrophic health insurance and cash-and-carry health care like “Gallbladders R Us.”
- Cut Medicare and Medicaid by 43%.
- Carte-blanche to the states with block grants for Medicaid and Medicare.
- No parity in coverage between mental health and physical health.
What would be the impact of Gary Johnson’s plan?
Healthcare inequality on steroids.
First, by repealing Obamacare we would go back to the “bad old days” when sick people couldn’t afford their health care for love or money. Millions who are now covered thanks to the Medicaid Expansion would be disenfranchised. Repealing the prescription drug benefit would leave Americans at the mercy of the most cutthroat of corporate monsters, Big Pharma.
Going back to a cash basis in health care means abandoning people with chronic or expensive illnesses to suffer and die unless they are rich enough to cough up thousands of dollars at the drop of a hat. This, when according to Forbes (9/23/16), 62% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings.
Cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits (hardly entitlements since we paid for them!) means that if you get sick, you’d better be rich. If not, your days are numbered. We’ll go back the harsh days before 1965 when 35% of senior Americans lived shorter, impoverished lives.
Giving the states carte-blanche to spend Medicare and Medicaid block grants would further increase the geographic inequality in American health care. Can there be any doubt that South Carolinians would get worse health care than Californians?
And rejecting parity between mental health and physical health takes us back to the Dark Ages. It implies that mentally ill people really aren’t “ill.” Like poverty, mental illness is a character flaw and doesn’t merit attention.
Gary Johnson’s plan would save Americans millions of dollars in taxes by cutting Medicare and Medicaid. But if millions of us become ill and are unable to afford health care, or even to keep our jobs, our ability to keep the economy going by paying our rent and mortgages or by making purchases would be threatened.
Our Take
We agree that individuals should have the freedom to determine the level of health care they want, the doctors they want, the medicines and the treatments they will use.
We also plainly see that private corporate health insurance is a problem. It interferes with every single healthcare decision we make.
From our choice of doctors to our choice of treatments, private corporate health insurance limits us and distorts our care without regard for our needs or preferences.
In America today, healthcare accessibility is increasingly tied to wealth – what one can afford.
By shifting the financing mechanism to a publicly accountable and cost-efficient single-payer agency, we can make sure that everyone pays their fair share (based on their income) while enjoying the freedom to choose our own doctors and treatments.
If you agree that health care should be universal, high quality, easy and affordable, instead of a hassle, join us. Together, we will win!
