We must fight for Guaranteed Healthcare: a national health insurance program that will provide comprehensive healthcare for every American. Coverage will be free at the point of care and guarantee:
- No premiums
- No deductibles
- No surprise bills
- Vision, hearing and dental care
- Reproductive and maternity care
- Prescription drugs
- Mental health treatment
- Substance abuse treatment
- Trauma and marriage counseling
- Long-term and disability care
Guaranteed Healthcare is the best way to provide equitable, universal healthcare to cover the costs of essential treatments to all Americans, regardless of status or employment.
Why Guaranteed Healthcare?
It’s simple: Health care is a human right. During the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 1 out of 3 COVID-19-related deaths have been linked to health insurance gaps. Over 30 million Americans have no health insurance, and millions more have delayed getting the medical attention they need due to high co-pays and deductibles. With recent economic volatility, cuts in employer-provided health insurance, and unemployment, it is more important than ever to implement Guaranteed Healthcare For All.
Our current healthcare system is broken. Our frontline workers are overworked, our hospitals are understaffed, and many patients aren’t getting the care they need. Yet despite enduring a global pandemic, the healthcare sector continues to operate as a business prioritizing profits over people.
America is the only wealthy nation that does not have a universal healthcare system. Despite spending the most money on healthcare, we have low life expectancy, high infant mortality, maternal mortality, and rates of chronic disease.
Americans are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. Healthcare-related debt is the largest cause of family bankruptcy in the nation. Even seniors are falling into medical debt because our current Medicare system is failing to meet their needs.
Currently, the healthcare industry continues to pour millions of dollars of dark money into political campaigns and lobbies policymakers in order to continue maximizing profits at our expense. In fact, the health insurance industry lobbied over $11 million to politicians in 2021, and more than two-thirds of Congress took money from Big Pharma during the 2020 campaign cycle, including many Democrats.
We can only have the healthcare system we need by electing true champions of Guaranteed Healthcare For All.
Further, while our healthcare industry and system is simply a sickness care system, we need to also pivot towards creating a sickness preventive care system as well, in order to truly address root causes and conditions that give rise to our illnesses. Further, we must recognize that caring for our health shouldn’t be limited to caring for our physical health only, but also our behavioral health, which includes our mental and emotional health. Most people who have physical health insurance coverage are required to jump through hoops and hurdles to have their insurance coverage also extend to counseling therapists. As a result, most Americans don’t receive any treatment or care for their behavioral health, in addition to those who don’t have any health insurance coverage of any kind whatsoever.
Structural Health Care Reform
In conjunction with Guaranteed Healthcare, Congress must overhaul the way our current healthcare system functions and operates. I will:
- Fight to Pass a Monthly Behavioral/Mental/Emotional Health Voucher that Every American Can Use Towards a Qualified Service Provider of their Choice – i.e., Mental Health UBI
- Ensure that price increases for hospitals are tied to costs – not profits.
- Require hospitals to release anonymized info about prices they charge for care, in order to create meaningful competitive price pressure on hospital systems.
- Establish fair, market-rate price caps on hospital services to prevent exorbitant and gouged fees from being placed on the American taxpayer
- Impose stronger regulations on medical device production and close the 510(K) loophole to prevent thousands of deaths and permanent injuries caused by the negligence and recklessness of manufacturers.
- Invest additional funds towards constructing, upgrading and modernizing America’s hospitals, clinics, community health centers and health stations to ensure everyone has access to cutting-edge, modern care.
- Tighten regulation to prevent hospitals’ abuse of non-profit status to disincentivize massive CEO salaries and irresponsible uses of revenue.
- Provide full, permanent and entitlement-based funding for the Indian Health Service, and ensure that we’re providing full healthcare and public health services for all Tribal Nations and Native Peoples, as outlined by our nation’s treaty and trust obligations.
- Pass the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act of 2021 (H.R. 959) to start addressing the disproportionately higher rates of maternal and child mortality within Black, Brown and Indigenous communities.
- Increase pay and stability for home healthcare workers, who are often underpaid women of color working in an increasingly critical field.
Help us meet the basic needs of people, save lives and improve health outcomes for all.
Frequently Asked Questions
How will the government pay for Guaranteed Healthcare?
Guaranteed Healthcare is projected to cost LESS than our current health care spending, according to studies from Yale University and University of California. Even the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank, projects that Guaranteed Healthcare will cost our government $800 billion less than the current system.
Guaranteed Healthcare will save taxpayers money and cut administrative costs, which make up nearly a third of our healthcare dollars. Costs will be further reduced by putting a greater focus on preventing sickness rather than only treating disease.
How is Guaranteed Healthcare different from Obamacare?
Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), focused on providing health insurance for people who are unemployed or cannot obtain insurance through their job or existing federal programs. It was a vital step to expanding access for Americans. The next step is Guaranteed Healthcare, which goes further by freeing care from the limitations of employer-based plans and unaffordable paywalls. Additionally, supporters of Guaranteed Healthcare find current deductibles still too high to pay, despite this amount being capped under the ACA.
How do we pay for Guaranteed Healthcare?
Guaranteed Healthcare’s economic benefits for this country are incredibly exciting. With a reformation of payroll tax income caps, a progressive wealth tax which ensures the top 1% pay their fair share, federal budgetary reallocation, and collaboration from state governments, we can create a model that is financially self-sufficient. It not only saves money for Americans by eliminating private costs and uninsured expenses, but also stimulates large-scale growth by increasing disposable and saveable income for every household in the nation.
Will Guaranteed Healthcare be efficient?
There is no doubt that Guaranteed Healthcare’s implementation will initially be met with obstacles and shortcomings, which progressive representatives will work to remediate. However, the model’s elimination of administration fees, as well as its removal of a profit-motive, ensure that the healthcare system of the future is entirely streamlined to help American users. Furthermore, the dependency upon complicated private network structures within both PPO and HMO plans have dramatically created inefficiency within the current system. Guaranteed Healthcare would eliminate these barriers, which create further inaccessibility and increase wait times for coverage. Finally, by helping fund state-led Guaranteed Healthcare programs within consenting states, we can create more localized models which maintain the federal government’s standard of care while prioritizing the local needs of individual states.