The Very Bad Politics of ‘Putting Healthcare Over Politics’
“A single payer is a publicly owned, publicly funded insurer with a legislated mandate to cover, in full, all care for all people—including medical, mental, and long-term care. By negotiating on behalf of 300 million people, it can serve as a de facto price regulator—the most important actor in driving healthcare costs down—while ensuring fair reimbursement for healthcare providers. Most importantly, it cannot shirk its responsibility to long-term population health.
“Through this obligation, through forcing the government to bear all the costs of providing care and the risks and costs of not providing care, we turn the federal single-payer into a tool for something bigger: a vision of health justice. If people are getting sick and dying because they don’t have a place to live, or if the places they live are unsafe, then housing is healthcare, and we must build free or affordable housing to bring healthcare costs down. If people are getting sick and dying because they don’t have have access to healthy food to eat, and they’re getting diabetes and comorbidities like cardiac failure, then food is healthcare, and we must provide affordable or free food options—and the time, space, materials, and community with which to prepare them— to bring healthcare costs down. If people are getting sick and dying because they don’t have access to needle exchange programs, therapy, or counseling, then rehabilitation is healthcare, and you build full-cycle addiction treatment programs—the social structures required to help people handle addiction, or perhaps not fall prey to it in the first place—to bring healthcare costs down.”
On Tuesday, former CMS administrator under Obama Andy Slavitt announced United States of Care, a “non-partisan non-profit” with undisclosed funding that plans on “building and mobilizing a movement to achieve long-lasting solutions that make health care better for everyone.”
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