I love bold ideas. Two of my favorites are ending the use of fossil fuels in the next 15 years and a national healthcare system that resembles those found in many other countries.
Whoever becomes president in 2020 won’t t be making the decision however, it will be the US Congress, with the assistance of Congressional Budget Office. Presidential candidates often box themselves in and set the stage for voter disappointment when they over promise things out of their control. Neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren will be able to overhaul the healthcare system as an executive order. That will be left to Congress with no certainty they will even will bring it for a vote.
Let’s say it clears the hurdles and beats the odds. It will have to be legally tight enough to survive in the courts over the next 50 years or so. It would need the votes of vulnerable congressional members who might possibly lose their seats. Republicans are chomping at the bit for Democrats to make healthcare overhaul their main objective for 2020. There’s a reason they are holding their powder on the topic right now; they are praying Democrats do it. It’s their only hope.
I have seen first hand the nefarious tactics used by insurance companies. I’ve worked around healthcare for 37 years, most of it directly with Medicare, private insurance and Medicaid billing. I owned a home healthcare company for 12 years and we would bill all insurances. Later I founded a company that sold Electronic Medical Record Software which interfaced with a billing module. We started a medical billing company to allow doctors and hospitals to use our outsourced service to create claims and collect monies for our client’s practices. I closed that company in 2018 after 16 years.
I hope people will be realistic as to how complicated a change it will be to overhaul the status quo and replace it with a national healthcare program like Medicare 4-All. I have difficulty with Sanders/Warren’s “all in” approach. As someone who worked in this industry, I would equate it with something like pulling up all the nations highways and putting down new ones. To be clear, I am totally against for profit healthcare, yet a staged approach starting with the public option would be less disruptive and have a better chance of getting passed and getting the public behind it.
I am a proponent of bold ideas and action, yet pragmatic enough to understand how deep and wide the tentacles our current healthcare system run. It will be difficult if not impossible to get all the stakeholders that will be required to participate onboard.
Warren for example, If she were to reset by saying “I thought about it, I agree with parts of Mayor Pete’s argument, I think it’s a good first step”. She could adopt his program and remove all her other rivals on this issue without sacrificing her liberal base. Demonstrating a willingness to change her positions with more information.
While we may passionately desire change for something better, concurrently human beings are uncomfortable with too much all at once. Revolutions rarely involve a single event, rather they evolve out of a series of smaller ones.