Health care for all – who can get it done?
In these first decades of the 21st century, the United States is the richest, strongest, most innovative nation on the planet. But in one crucial area — keeping people healthy — the mighty USA is a third-rate power.
All other industrialized democracies have significantly better health outcomes than the U.S. — longer life expectancy, better recovery rates from illness or injury. Yet they spend, on average, half what we do for health care. Americans are getting ripped off every day by a health care system that costs much more but delivers much less.
You might think that the federal government would act on a problem like that, particularly since health care now devours about 18 percent of all our wealth. But when Washington took on the “repeal-and replace” project last year, our grid-locked Congress couldn’t pass anything. Which is probably good news, because the plans that were proposed would have taken away health insurance from millions of Americans, and raised premiums for everybody else.
Accordingly, leaders in many states have decided we can’t wait for Washington to fix U.S. health care. That’s why health care reform has become a key issue in Colorado’s governor’s race.
As an advocate for a health care system that covers everybody at reasonable cost, I’ve studied the proposals of all the major candidates. It is clear to me that Jared Polis has the strongest determination and the best plans to reach the goal of health care for everybody.
Polis worked alongside President Obama to pass the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare is hardly perfect, but it does mean that hundreds of thousands of Coloradans — children, single mothers, and the most vulnerable among us — have health insurance for the first time in their lives.
But Polis recognizes that our system still denies care to too many Coloradans. Hundreds of thousands have no health insurance. About a million Coloradans have insurance with deductibles so high they can’t afford to go the doctor. And the out-of-state insurance companies providing these rotten plans raise their premiums every year at ten times the rate of inflation.
So I was impressed when Jared Polis put forward a plan to provide universal, single-payer health care to every Coloradan. His basic idea makes sense: Polis will build a system — it looks like Medicare for All — by forming partnerships with other western states to offer guaranteed, low-cost health coverage to Coloradans and the citizens of surrounding states.
This could be a game-changer for rural Colorado, where the provider shortage is stranding residents without access to the kind of care they need when they need it most. Polis is the only candidate I’ve found who has a solution to this problem; his system would incentivize more providers to practice in rural and underserved areas.
Polis’ plan includes other innovative solutions to improve access to care, such as mobile health clinics that can bring a wide spectrum of care to Coloradans who live far from clinics, expanded access to telemedicine, and partnerships with grocery stores and public transit agencies to combat food insecurity.
The giant drug companies that are constantly raising their prices for the pills we need to stay alive have enormous political clout. Polis is not afraid to fight back. He advocates importing drugs from Canada — where the same pill made in the same factory costs 1/10 of the U.S. price. He would also force drug companies to justify any proposed price hike on economic grounds — a mechanism to stop their outrageous annual increases.
It takes knowledge, ingenuity, and guts to challenge the health care establishment and come up with a way to provide high-quality health care for everybody. It’s clear to me that Jared Polis has what it takes, and he’s determined to get it done. That’s why the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care gave him their highest rating. That’s why he’s won the votes of universal care advocates like me all over Colorado.