I want to kick kids off SCHIP. That's right, every freakin' one of 'em. No more SCHIP for them!
You think I'm heartless? Just wait! I want to kick all those poor people off of Medicaid too! Every last one of 'em. Fire every damned case manager, lock the doors, and throw away the keys.
And disabled people? They spent years fighting rejections to finally get on Medicare. Well, that's not how things are going to be, if I get my way.
And anybody lucky enough to get health insurance from their employer? Well, I don't think their employer should be providing them with that anymore!
I'm sure many of you are already on to me here. No, I'm not a heartless bastard who wants to see people without health care.
I want one simple single-payer national health insurance program that covers every citizen and legal immigrant.
Think of it. Think of the money saved. Think of the hassles, and headaches, and heartaches saved.
Are you poor? Why should you have to jump through hoops to get Medicaid? Why should you have to supplicate yourself to some uncivil servant? You have kids, and you're poor, but not poor enough for Medicaid? Why should you have to jump through another agency's hoops to see if you can get your kids covered (while you continue to do without?)
An illness or injury left you unable to work at all? You were finally granted disability from our government, so now you get a small stipend to live on, along with health insurance? But to prove your disability you had to jump through hoops for five years, including submitting stacks of medical records, when your disability kept you from working, so you didn't have health insurance, so you couldn't freakin' afford doctors, so you didn't have much in the way of medical records? How about a system where you had health insurance not because you're disabled, but because you're a human being, God damn it!
And you veterans? Well, many of you have special medical needs that are not only related to your service, but are considerably less common among the civilian population. I don't want you to have to search among a provider community that, at large, is ill-equipped, ill-trained, and ill-experienced to give you the care you need. So I want a VA that gives ready access to those professionals whose training, experience, and resources can benefit you.
But you shouldn't have to leave a limb or a piece of your emotional health behind on a battlefield to get healthcare. You know what you, and everyone else, should have to do to receive comprehensive health insurance?
Be an American. Be born an American, become an American, or be a non-American who is in this country legally.
I want to see Aetna, Humana, Cigna, Assurant.....every fucking health insurance company in America put out of business.
Oh heck, you know what? If those companies can figure out a way to remain in business, so be it. Maybe they could sell policies that would get me a private room when I'm hospitalized instead of a double. Maybe folks would buy a "My hospital TV has to be hi-def" policy, or a policy that stipulates that all your nurses have to look like they stepped out of a Mexican telenovela. Go ahead then insurance companies....knock yourselves out. But deciding whether you're going to pay for my treatment or not? Snooping through my life to see if you can find some excuse to rescind my coverage? You can kiss that power goodbye, assholes.
I want every hospital social worker to be able to devote their time to social work. Hook people up with support groups for their illness, direct them to grief counseling. But no more time and energy spent trying to figure out how to get a patient to be able to receive the care they need but can't afford. When I'm in a hospital bed and I look up to see a social worker enter the room, I want to think "Oh, somebody's here to help me," not "Oh Jesus, I must be fucked!"
And you employers? Well, I want you to be free to pursue building your business without the burden of ever increasing and unpredictable health insurance premiums for your employees, just as your foreign competitors are able to do. Oh sure, you're going to see your tax burden increase to pay for the nationalized health insurance. But you know what? You're going to find out the same thing that Ford and Chrysler and GM have learned: The tax burden will still be less than the cost of providing insurance through the private insurance industry.
And you better see to it that some of that money saved gets passed on to your workers in the form of higher wages, because you know what else? Once your workers are no longer tethered to you through the ring in their nose that is employer provided health insurance, some of them are going to be shopping around for better jobs. Heck, some are even going to go into business in competition with you.
That's it. No more alphabet soup of government agencies covering a handful of folks who fall into certain narrowly defined categories, each with its own bureaucracy. No more patchwork quilt of systems, with many eligible for no system at all. No more hard working Americans losing sleep at night over the thought that a layoff would mean not only the loss of their income, but the loss of their family's healthcare. No more poor out of work people on Medicaid unable to accept employment because doing so would cost them their healthcare.
Call it what you want: Medicare For All, Americare.....I don't care. It's moral. It's cost efficient. It makes sense.