HEALTHCARE

We all know our healthcare system is broken. I’ve seen it first hand, and so have too many families in our community. Medical bills are the number one cause of family bankruptcy. People refuse to go to the hospital—even with insurance—because they’re afraid of the bills. Doctors and nurses are overstretched — and have been for years, even before this pandemic. Independent pharmacists are squeezed out of business by pharma giants and insurance companies, even as the prices of our medicines become unaffordable for the grandmother now forced to choose between food and her prescriptions. The claim that we have “the greatest health care system in the world” would be laughable if it wasn’t so poisonous. I’m a scientist, but it doesn’t take a PhD to know that we can do a lot better.

I firmly believe in single-payer Medicare for All. But I also firmly believe that we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In Congress, I will support any and every good-faith effort to improve our broken health care system. Medicare and Medicaid need higher reimbursement rates for physicians. The exchanges need more competition. Drug prices need to be negotiated by Medicare. 

Healthcare policy can be fiendishly complex, but some of the solutions here are not. We can secure better outcomes for more people.