Dear Sharra, Today I want to talk to you about the state of health in our country and what I think we need to do about it.
We are virtually the only wealthy democracy without some form of single-payer universal healthcare system, and at the same time, we have much higher rates of illness than comparably wealthy countries. In other words, in the United States, our government will get you sick with its poor regulatory policies and then leave you to suffer and die if you can't afford the healthcare costs.
I have two sweeping policy initiatives to deal with this: a Medicare-for-All Universal Healthcare system and a Whole Health Plan that deals with root causes of illness instead of only symptoms. With Medicare for All, we will end the madness of people avoiding the care they need due to cost and even going deep into medical debt. And with my Whole Health Plan we will deal with why so many Americans are sick in the first place, moving beyond the current disease care system to build a true healthcare system. |
As I have written, healthy food, healthy water, and healthy air are regularly sacrificed at the altar of short-term profits for Big Food, Big Agricultural and Big Chemical companies. A less stressful lifestyle is sacrificed at the altar of corporate greed, making the average American work harder and longer for less money, with too little time and energy for health-enhancing activities.
And healthcare accessibility is sacrificed at the altar of the insurance companies and Big Pharma – leading to 500,000 Americans going into medical debt every year; 85 million Americans uninsured or underinsured; 68,000 Americans dying every year from lack of health care; and 18 million Americans every year unable to fulfill their medical prescriptions.
All of these problems – the reason we get so sick and the reason we can't get care for our illnesses – come back to one issue: the corporate control of our government. If we are going to heal America, we will have to take back our government and make it work for working-class Americans.
It will not be easy making the kinds of changes I want to make happen in Washington. But no one will be more honest at explaining the real issues to the American people, or more dedicated to using every level of power available to me in my pursuit of fundamental change. Our current way of doing things does more to sicken people than to heal them, and when I'm President this is going to change.
This is an intense phase of the campaign and I hope you'll give generously. |
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