It’s time to move towards universal health care.

It’s time for America to move towards universal health care.

The statistics speak for themselves. Half of U.S. adults say it’s difficult to afford care. One-third of Americans say they’ve put off care in the past year because of the cost.

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All of this is accelerated by Trump’s devastating cuts. His OBBBA cut $1 trillion from Medicaid in order to finance tax breaks for the very wealthiest. After he let ACA premium tax credits expire, nearly 3 million Americans immediately dropped their coverage and millions more were forced to pay hundreds or thousands more annually.

Trump knew these policies would be unpopular and devastating – which is why he scheduled several cuts to go into effect after the midterms. Across the country, we’re going to see even more devastating impacts for patients and hospitals, as rural communities have their already endangered health care systems further battered by another wave of cuts.

But we need to be honest. The problem is bigger than this administration.

Even before these cuts, millions of Americans were slipping through the cracks… qualifying for Medicaid some years and not others… getting shunted from plan to plan year after year… Qualifying for subsidies and then having them ripped away.

To add insult to injury, our current system is exceedingly expensive but still doesn’t yield better results than the countries we’re outspending. Our per capita health care spending is more than TWICE the average spend of peer nations – and yet our life expectancy is the lowest among 13 other peer nations and our infant mortality rate is the highest.

We need to stop paying more and getting less. We need to move towards universal health care. I have a plan for us to start taking the first steps NOW.

My Health CARE Act would start off by reversing all of Trump’s disastrous cuts to care… permanently expanding ACA tax credits and restoring Medicaid funding.

But we need to take it a step further. My plan would also:

• Create a low-cost public health insurance option so we can improve health coverage by spurring competition based on lowering costs and providing better benefits.

• Expand the Medicare-negotiated drug prices, $35/month insulin, and out-of-pocket prescription drug caps to everyone on Obamacare or employer markets.

• Make huge improvements to transparency and disclosure requirements of both employer-sponsored health insurance plans and hospitals, labs, and imaging centers so you actually have some sense of what you’re being charged, can shop around when that’s an option, and so employer plans can negotiate the best terms to keep your premiums stable.

• Ensure health insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers do not put profit over patients by reforming the use of step therapy and prior authorization, banning PBM spread pricing in Medicaid, allowing Medicare Advantage enrollees to switch plans mid-year if their provider leaves their network, and requiring all retail, mail-order, and specialty pharmacies to respond to surveys that collect drug acquisition costs.

• Improve Medicaid by reinstating the higher federal match when a state newly expands Medicaid and applying it retroactively to states that expanded late.

• Improve Medicare by including hearing aid coverage.

Look, I know it’ll be an uphill battle to passage. But your costs and your health care are worth fighting for.

And long term, we’re going to need to take even bigger steps to truly get to a universal coverage model… but that’s no excuse for not taking the first steps now. Once we get these measures in place, we can work towards figuring out a model that would deliver quality, universal care to every American.

Let’s fight for real change. Let’s get this done and then get to universal coverage.

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