1. Health care is a right for all, not privilege for the few
2. build a health care system that is driven by the needs of patients and the people who care for them, instead of the profit motives of corporations
3. Securing Universal Health Care Through a Public Option
a. give all Americans the choice to select a public health care plan through the marketplace
i. at least one plan choice will have no deductibles, be administered by CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) instead of private companies, will cover all primary care and control costs for other treatments by negotiating prices with doctors and hospitals.
ii. Lowest income Americans will be automatically enrolled in this plan
b. Older workers can choose between employer plans, the public option, or Medicare (which they will be able to enroll in at age 60 instead of 65)
c. Empower states to develop local approaches to health coverage
d. invest more in community health centers and rural health clinics, increase support for mobile health clinics
4. Bringing Down Drug Prices and Taking on the Pharmaceutical Industry
a. cover all necessary medications
b. prevent the price of brand-name and outlier generic drugs from rising faster than inflation rate
c. cap out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors
d. ensure that effective treatments for chronic conditions are available at little or no cost
5. Reducing Heath Care Costs and Improving Health Care Quality
a. we can reduce out-of-pocket costs for families while improving the quality of health care for all.
b. no one will pay more than 8.5% of their income in premiums
c. outlaw surprise medical billing
i. When you’re at the hospital, you shouldn’t have to worry if every person who takes care of you is in-network or not
1. This is huge. I have seen facebook posts of people who were in emergency surgery and got an astronomical bill from the random dude who was JUST STANDING THERE and wasn’t in network. Not cool.
d. increase price transparency in the health care system
e. expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing
f. increase access to health care for low income and rural areas
6. Expanding Access to Mental Health and Substance Use Treatment
a. ensure that health insurers adequately cover mental health and substance use treatment
b. train and hire more mental health providers, substance use disorder counselors, and peer support counselors
c. stop over-prescribing while improving access to effective and needed pain management
d. support expanded access to mental health and substance use disorder care in prisons
e. ensure no one is incarcerated solely for drug use, and support increased use of drug courts, harm reduction interventions, and treatment diversion programs for those struggling with substance use disorders.
i. I like this. Sending someone to jail for being addicted to drugs is honestly just mean.
7. Expanding Long-Term Care Services and Supports
a. eliminate waiting lists for home and community-based care
b. modernize Medicaid eligibility so people with disabilities do not have to work low-wage jobs to access needed services
c. increase the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
d. improve nursing home staffing and quality standards, strengthen accreditation processes, and combat corporate abuses in nursing home and independent living facilities.
e. protect and enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act.
8. Eliminate Racial, Gender, and Geographic Health Inequities
a. even before COVID, the uninsured rate was 3x higher for Latinos and almost 2x higher for Black Americans than it was for whites.
b. “Democrats will launch a sustained, government-wide effort, with leadership at the highest levels, to eliminate racial, ethnic, gender, and geographic gaps in insurance rates, access to quality care and health outcomes. That includes tackling the social, economic, and environmental inequities – the social determinants of health like poor housing, hunger, inadequate transportation, mass incarceration, air and water pollution, and gun violence – that contribute to worse health outcomes for low-income Americans and people of color.”
c. expand coverage, make health care more affordable, tackle implicit bias in our health care system.
i. If you don’t think there’s implicit bias in the healthcare system, think again. This goes farther than just race. There are biases against weight, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity. It’s a problem. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5333436/
d. people with disabilities should never ben denied coverage based on the use of quality-adjusted life year indexes
e. extend Affordable Care Act coverage to Dreamers
f. lift the 5 year waiting period for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program eligibility for low-income, lawfully present immigrants.
g. committed to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic
9. Protecting Native American health
a. they have insufficient access to health care, mental health services, nutrition services, and modern infrastructure
b. work toward full funding for the Indian Health Service
10. Securing Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice
a. every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion
b. repeal Title X domestic gag rule
c. restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides vital preventative and reproductive health care for millions of people, particularly those in underserved areas
i. One thing Planned Parenthood does? Provide access to contraceptives, and we know that better access to contraceptives brings rates of abortion down. It’s a preventative thing.
d. repeal the Hyde Amendment, codify the right to reproductive freedom
e. oppose restrictions on medication abortion care that are inconsistent with medical and scientific evidence
f. “We recognize that quality, affordable comprehensive health care; medically accurate, LGBTQ+ inclusive, age-appropriate sex education; and the full range of family planning services are all essential to ensuring that people can decide if, when, and how to start a family.”
g. ACA prohibits discrimination in health care on the basis of sex, and requires insurers to cover prescription contraceptives at no cost. This has significantly reduced unintended pregnancies
i. I’m going to put in my 2 cents here…Abortion rates have been steadily declining over the past 30 years, and the sharpest declines happen during Democratic presidencies. Why? Because Democrats support the legislation that keeps abortions from being necessary in the first place, like the above point where the ACA required insurers to cover contraceptives at no cost. If we just make abortion illegal, people will still get them, illegally and unsafely. We can work to continue to make abortion unnecessary instead of illegal.
11. Protecting and Promoting Maternal Health
a. Black women are 3x as likely to die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth than white women
i. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1595019/
ii. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/america-is-failing-its-black-mothers/
iii. This is a problem. We need to do something about it (see letter c)
b. expand postpartum Medicaid coverage to a full year after birth
c. implement implicit bias training for health professionals
d. support policies and approaches that will bring down our high maternal mortality rate
12. Protecting LGBTQ+ Health
a. Trump administration is allows doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies to discriminate against patients based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
i. Democrats will restore nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people
ii. federal health plans should provide coverage for HIV/AIDS testing and treatment, HIV prevention medications, gender confirmation surgery, and hormone therapy
1. This is not ok.
b. Obama-Biden administration lifted the lifetime ban on blood donation by healthy gay and bisexual Americans, and we will keep working to ensure that blood donation regulations are based on science.
13. Strengthening and Supporting the Health Care Workforce
a. Frontline workers have been heroes in this pandemic, and too many are underpaid and don’t have good enough benefits, we will change this.
14. Investing in Health Science and Research
a. support increased and sustainable funding for health and medical research
b. accelerate research into cancer and cancer treatments
c. increase funding for research into health disparities by race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, geographic area, and socioeconomic status
d. fully integrate people with disabilities in all states of health and medical research
e. improve quality and applicability of our medical research for women and people of color
f. protect the independence and intellectual freedom of scientists, take steps to shield scientific research agencies from political interference
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