Our Policies

Problems

• Many Americans are not able to receive effective healthcare without going into debt.
• America does not currently have an effective system of preventive healthcare.
• America’s pharmaceutical and healthcare industries are financially invested in keeping people sick.
• The abuse of prescription drugs, such as opiates, is plaguing our nation.
• There is a deep misalignment of incentives within the American healthcare system.
• Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Americans were experiencing a widespread increase in physical and mental health problems that have exacerbated civil unrest and societal dysfunction.

Solutions

• We will ensure that all Americans have access to healthcare, with affordable and effective healthcare for every American.
• We will redesign America’s healthcare system to create all-win scenarios for companies and people through preventive care and treatments at reduced cost.
• We will provide ethical and moral regulatory frameworks for the development of tools serving the interests of national healthcare, such as mental health reporting and contact tracing.
• We will ensure that mental health services and support are accessible to all Americans.
• We will free businesses, especially startups and small businesses, from the need to provide healthcare to their employees. They already have enough to focus on.
• We will promote exercise, a healthy diet, and other preventive healthcare measures to reduce our reliance on surgeries and pharmaceuticals.
• We will create new healthcare standards that prevent and mitigate the overprescription and abuse of pharmaceutical drugs.
• We will disincentivize pharmaceutical companies from marketing drugs to those who do not need them.
• We will fund research into effective, non-addictive painkillers, including traditional medicinal approaches.
• We will create a single-payer healthcare system to provide the best short-term solution for America’s healthcare challenges.
• We will also create a more optimized long-term solution for America’s healthcare needs.

Background

The U.S. spends more on healthcare per capita and in total than any other nation in the world, by far. On average, the U.S. spends twice as much on healthcare as its counterparts in the developed world. The main reasons for America’s high healthcare costs are excessive healthcare industry bureaucracy, the excessive use of expensive medical technology, and higher prices for diagnostic tests, pharmaceutical drugs, and similar medical expenses. U.S. consumers and healthcare providers pay significantly more for pharmaceutical drugs relative to other nations. According to a recent government report, individual pharmaceutical drug prices in the U.S. ranged from 70% to 4,833% more than the combined average price of the same drugs in other countries.

Despite being the wealthiest nation in the world and spending more than any other nation on healthcare, the U.S. has the worst healthcare outcomes out of the top 11 developed countries in the world. In terms of infant mortality, the U.S. ranks #33 out of 36 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). According to a commonwealth fund report, the current American healthcare system ranks lowest in the developed world in terms of “efficiency, equity, and outcomes.”

One of the main contributing factors to poor healthcare outcomes and overall healthcare quality is the lack of adequate healthcare coverage for a significant percentage of the American population. In 2018, there were 27.9 million people without healthcare insurance in the U.S., a total increase of approximately 500,000 from the year before. The number of uninsured people has gone up by 1.2 million since 2016, when the U.S. reached an all time low in this metric. Additionally, many Americans are underinsured such that the costs of a major health problem inevitably result in bankruptcy.

Our campaign is committed to improving the quality of life and the lifespan of every American by upgrading our healthcare system. Providing an effective single-payer public healthcare option reduces the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans to zero, thereby improving overall healthcare quality and outcomes nationwide. Using technologies like blockchain allows us to redesign how healthcare and medical data are both stored and shared, improving transparency, data protection, and accessibility. By more effectively governing the health insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical industries, we will eliminate waste, corruption, and overspending. In the process, we will reduce healthcare costs and improve healthcare quality.