18th District candidate Solomon says single-payer health care is top issue

Every day that emergency physician Bob Solomon goes to work, he says, he sees the problems of people who are uninsured or under-insured.

Some can’t afford basic health care, others are forced into debt, he said.

Because of those experiences, the 59-year-old self-described progressive Democrat from Oakdale is making single-payer health care and Medicare for all the focal points of his campaign for a seat in Congress.

“I have had a passion for many years of finding ways to move the country toward universal health care, and clearly a single-payer system is the most direct and efficient route to that,” Dr. Solomon said Friday night at a fundraiser in Carnegie attended by about 75 people, including many singlepayer advocates.

A single-payer system, he argues on his website, “is not ‘government-run health care,’” but a system in which doctors and hospitals are “sending the bills to Medicare instead of to [an insurer that] employs an army of people to review claims and say, ‘No, we’re not paying for that.’”

That is one of nine policy statements on the site that describe Dr. Solomon’s positions on topics ranging from guns to public funding of college education, with varying degrees of specificity. In a previous Post-Gazette interview, Dr. Solomon prided himself on being “a wonk on a wide range of issues,” none more critical than health care.

“His message has not only the correct intellectual drive, but it also has the anecdotal, practical objective factual data that he can show,” said Ed Grystar of the Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare.

A vocal backer of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Dr. Solomon said that like Mr. Sanders, “I’ll be relying heavily on grassroots support.” As of September, he had raised $15,162 in campaign contributions, a small down payment on the $250,000 he said he hoped to raise by year’s end.

Dr. Solomon is among a half-dozen Democrats seeking the seat in the 18th Congressional District vacated in October by Tim Murphy. Other candidates include Westmoreland County Commissioner Gina Cerilli, former Allegheny County Councilman Mike Crossey, Navy veteran and former Department of Veterans Affairs official Pam Iovino, former federal prosecutor Conor Lamb and psychologist Rueben Brock.

“This campaign really is the only one on the Democratic side that has a clear agenda,” Dr. Solomon said. “I have a very clearly outlined agenda with detailed positions on major issues. Because I’m a physician, the issue that is the centerpiece of my campaign is universal health care.”