Two health care issues all Dems should be pushing for at all levels...

[Wounded Bear]

1. Medicare reimbursement rates. Congress sets these with limits for the regional boards to set. Higher rates mean more Medicare for people as more doctors will accept more Medicare patients if they're paid closer to competitive rates.

2. Federal support for local health clinics and hospitals. There was actually support for this in the ACA, another thing that Repubs hate about it.

Both of these are not heavy lifts in Congress, don't require large programs to create and pass, and could in part be accomplished from the Oval Office.

These ideas need to be pressed at the Senate and House levels, too.

[emmaverybo]

1. Good post. We need immediate do-ables. NT

[Celerity]

2. I would add Medicaid reimbursement rates as well, as those are even lower than Medicare and far

lower than private insurance reimbursement rates. Biden, for example has now switched from a Medicare-based public option to a Medicaid-based one, which, if the lower pay-out rates are maintained for Medicaid, makes that form of public option a non-starter as so many doctors refuse to take Medicaid at all.


Medicare, Medicaid Reimbursement $76.8B Under Hospital Costs

Hospitals also provided $38.4 billion in uncompensated care in 2017 as the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement shortfall grew $8 billion from the previous year.

https://revcycleintelligence.com/news/medicare-medicaid-reimbursement-76.8b-under-hospital-costs

[Wounded Bear]

4. Agreed...

We need to highlight how Repubs have been "starving the beast" and how their policies have hurt people all over the country, but especially in "Trump country."

[Celerity]

5. I am really pessimistic on even a public option being passed even if we have the House

by say 240 or 250 members in our caucus and the we retake the Senate and have 51 to even 53 members.

The Rethugs have gerrymandered (and now the SCOTUS has re-affirmed their power to do so, grrrr) the national electoral map to artificially create so many red and purple seats that we (2018 shows this) are in the grip of having to run a huge amount of moderates to win control of Congress and keep it. The New Democrat Coalition (centrists, pro growth (ie pro limited corporate tax cuts, pro public-private partnerships, etc) is now a huge presence in our overall Democratic caucus. Over 100 members. That doesn't even count the Blue Dogs and the very problematic Problem Solvers (other than a few over-lappers who are in both groups) caucuses as well.

Many of those moderate and/or centrist bi-partisan leaning members will never sign on to a public option I fear (because they do not want to lose their seats in those red and purple districts via being falsely painted as 'socialists'), and the massive healthcare/big pharma lobbyist groups have pledged to defeat it as well. AHIP (America's Health Insurance Plans) spent over 100 million USD in the last 14 months prior to the ACA's passage trying to defeat it the ACA itself and then made sure Obama gave up on the public option. They and others have vowed to do the same again. AHIP's executive board member (who also is the CEO of the 2nd biggest Blue Cross group, Independence Blue Cross) Daniel J. Hilferty, was the co-chair of Biden's giant kick-off Philadelphia fund-raiser. They are also tossing in millions to other candidates across the board, in both parties, at all levels.

I have the same concerns for even a national plan for tuition free community college only passing (let alone 4 year degrees), anything remotely granting massive student loan debt relief, such as drastically lowering interest rates or allowing bankruptcy discharge (let alone vast or total debt forgiveness) passing and anything even remotely. slightly, moving towards a comprehensive climate change plan (call it GND- vert-lite)passing. I do not see any of those have a truly realistic chance of success in the current systemic political superstructure and dynamics.

I am totally for all of it, but I am one VERY cynical (I prefer to call it depressingly realistic) 23 year old woman when it come to pretty much any of it happening.

We will be VERY lucky to simply claw back just the basic ACA (which itself has massive cost increases in terms of premiums and other consumer costs built in) with its vital pre-existing conditions protections, and maintain it at even basic levels, flawed as it may be. The nation is careening to the right (in terms of systemic economic control, deregulation, wealth inequality, and overall outcome) more and more as each year flies by. The psychotic RW assault on our basic civil rights also makes it harder to fight this all as well.

[Recursion]

3. The FQHC funding is everything. That is the most important thing

If we ever do get universal medical coverage in the US, the Federal clinic system is how we're going to do it. Keep it going.