ON HEALTH CARE AFTER CORONAVIRUS

Good: (No immediate response from the candidate).

Webb: “The pandemic is exposing so many cracks, certainly in access to care, certainly in the social determinants of health and who we’re seeing becoming sick with COVID-19. I think it becomes a clarion call for us [to make] sure that everyone has access to care … I think it’s just a matter of expanding that with a public health insurance option that says, no matter who you are, if it’s the cost of private insurance that’s prohibiting you, you can get public insurance here at a rate that’s relative to your income to make sure that you’re covered. The folks who are uninsured, it’s impossible for them to get access to COVID-19 testing but for community-based testing and so that creates a layer of challenge. If they do get COVID-19 or end up in the hospital in the ICU for ten days, which seems to be an average. That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars that there’s no way for them to ever pay. … And then … look at the impact it’s had on the cost of prescription medications and folks being able to a ord those medications. I mentioned my hospital was losing 85 million dollars a month and that’s because we weren’t doing elective procedures. We need to move to value-based contracting in health care instead of purely fee per service and that’s something that private insurance has helped lead the way on and that’s one of the reasons why I advocate for maintaining private insurance because I think they are a key innovator in the American health care system.”