Tom wants to go to Washington not to merely “expand” coverage or hope a few million more Wisconsinites get access to health care. He’s running for Senate so NO AMERICAN ever has to worry again about dying if they can’t afford healthcare and that means implementing Medicare for All.
Our current healthcare system is an embarrassment, with millions denied coverage, millions more going bankrupt due to unaffordable costs and outcomes that show Americans are paying more while seeing poor results compared to other industrialized nations with universal health care systems.
No one should have to forgo seeing a doctor or taking their medication because they need to pay for groceries instead. We also know communities of color have higher rates of uninsured and in Wisconsin, we shamefully lead the country in infant mortality for black infants.
We must enact universal health care that stops this wasteful system that benefits insurance and big Pharma profits at the expense of patients. We need a single-payer system like Medicare for All.
Health care is especially personal to Tom. His wife and mom had cancer. They were lucky to have had good insurance. Too many others cannot say that and that is wrong. Health care is a human right.
Universal health care will carry enormous benefits and savings for county health and human services departments. In this respect, Medicare for All can be viewed as tax savings – or a tax cut – for property taxes, one of the more regressive taxes that are levied locally or at any level of government. If Outagamie County had Medicare for All, we could raise workers wages with the money saved and conserve precious tax payer dollars by diverting foregone health care demands and expenditures into other areas of need. Getting rid of copayments, deductibles, nonsensical in-network requirements, and surprise hospital billings means workers would see more money in their pockets at the end of the day.
The pandemic has shown that we need universal health care not tied to employment. Our health care system has been pummeled by the COVID crisis. A for-profit system that prioritizes certain levels of care — namely “profit centers” like cardiovascular, cancer and orthopedics and at the expense of other health areas – and does not incentivize the kind of leadership and cooperation you need in a crisis. In some instances, hospital systems did not share information on bed capacity and ventilators. Medicare for All would address, if not solve these problems.
Tom’s Agenda:
- Medicare for All, to ensure no one is without health insurance and no one is goes bankrupt because of an illness.
- Medicare for All would allow for the government to negotiate with drug companies to finally stop the gouging of patients. Insulin patients would not die because they can’t afford medication.
- Addressing racial disparities and Wisconsin’s shameful health outcomes for communities of color through Medicare for All.
- Crack down on health care mergers. Antitrust abuses means corporate mergers in health care sectors - from hospitals to insurance companies to medical devices to medical purchasing - have been allowed, further driving up costs.
- A women’s right to choose must be protected. Roe v. Wade must be codified.
- Fully fund state and local efforts to combat and mitigate opioid abuse, including diversion courts such as drug treatment and mental health court.
Tom’s Record:
- Only Senate candidate to campaign on Medicare for All
- Helped save the critical SeniorCare program for prescription drugs
- Tom has 100% lifetime NARAL and Planned Parenthood voting records
- Worked with county executives and administrators to help adopt enabling legislation that made Wisconsin eligible for over $400 million in opioid lawsuit settlement funds, about $300 million of which will go directly to counties like Outagamie to fund existing and new programing for opioid mitigation and education initiatives.
- Helped start specialty courts in his county to address root causes in the criminal justice system. Outagamie County is one of the only counties in the state to have three diversion courts — drug treatment, mental health and veterans
- Oversees a nationally recognized nursing home that provides crucial short- and long-term health care services to the elderly and disabled.
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