Talking Healthcare

I am often asked about healthcare costs, so I am writing now to address that question.

I live and work here in Maine: I want to pay for myself going to the doctor and I want to pay for my friends and neighbors going to the doctor, because healthcare is cheaper when we all chip in to help pay for it, and because Mainers take care of each other. It’s what we do. What I don’t want to do is pay for a private insurance company to stand between us and gatekeep what doctors and what care they think we do and don’t need. Insurance is not care. Insurance companies do not cure anybody of anything (except curing people of their prospects of having a healthy bank account). Insurance companies do not deserve to be paid for our healthcare.

The broadest way to help and be helped by the most people is to have every single medical practice in the country bill into a pool where every person in the country chips in to help cover it. That’s the central premise behind insurance, only we can cut out the waste by just having one pool for the whole country and not paying the corporate wigs their wasted billions to run it. No insurance company’s negative attitude, no insurance executive’s private jets, no insurance company’s unfathomably high premiums.

And there’s a place that’s involved already involved the running of every single medical practice: it’s the US Department of Health and Human Services. And it’s got a bill that every American pays a share of every year, which is the federal budget. My goal is to fully develop this connection and turn it into a road where every American can really and truly help each other, and all for less money than we’re paying now.

My question to you is: how much tax would you willingly pay in order to never pay an insurance premium ever again? Because that’s the efficient way to do it. That’s the cheap way to do it. That’s the way to do it that leaves everybody else out of the room where you and your doctor are making the decisions about your life.

That’s what we deserve. What you call that system is up to you.