Affordable Health Care
Core Ideas:
First: Drive down costs through transparency. No more secret negotiations. No more monopolistic price-gouging. When hospitals and drug companies have to compete in the open, prices drop.
Second: Expand public insurance options. Give Americans real choices: not just expensive private plans that deny coverage when you need it most. Competition keeps insurers honest.
Third: Fix how we deliver care. Reward doctors for keeping you healthy, not for ordering unnecessary tests. Streamline the system so your medical team spends more time with you and less time fighting insurance bureaucracy.
Fourth: Address the maternal health crisis head-on. Every mother deserves to survive childbirth. Period. That means targeted funding, better access to prenatal care, and accountability for the stark racial disparities that are killing mothers of color.
Fifth: Make it sustainable. This isn’t about bankrupting the country: it’s about making health care affordable without destroying our federal budget. Smart reform. Fair funding. Long-term thinking.
Introduction:
Health care in America is broken, and most Americans know it.
We pay more than any nation on Earth, yet millions still avoid the doctor, ration prescriptions, or risk bankruptcy after getting sick. That’s not a system under stress. That’s a system failing the people it’s supposed to protect.
Project RAD’s Affordable Health Care plan is NOT an abstract policy idea, but as a direct response to a national crisis we’ve normalized for far too long.
Below is Project RAD’s plan for Affordable Health Care in the US.
📘 Define Affordable Health Care as a Fundamental Right
🎯 Objective:
Codify affordable health care as a basic human right, not a privilege.
✅ Key Actions:
Pass federal legislation affirming the right to affordable health care for all citizens and legal residents.
Set national affordability benchmarks: no household should spend more than a fixed percent of income on health premiums, co-pays, or prescriptions.
Establish a Health Equity Office within HHS to ensure that underserved populations have equal access.
📘 Reduce Costs Through Transparency and Competition
🎯 Objective:
Drive down health care and prescription drug costs through transparency, negotiation, and anti-monopoly enforcement.
✅ Key Actions:
Drug Price Negotiation: Expand Medicare’s authority to negotiate prices for all high-cost drugs.
Price Transparency: Require public posting of hospital, procedure, and drug prices (already partially implemented).
Ban anti-competitive practices (e.g., “pay-for-delay” in pharmaceuticals).
Increase funding for generic and biosimilar drug development.
📘 Expand and Strengthen Public Insurance Options
🎯 Objective:
Increase access and affordability through public insurance alternatives.
✅ Key Actions:
Create a Medicare Buy-In or Public Option available to all Americans regardless of age.
Expand Medicaid eligibility in all 50 states (close the coverage gap in holdout states).
Offer low- or no-cost insurance for families below 250% of the federal poverty line.
Improve risk pooling across age and income groups to stabilize premium costs.
📘 Reform the Payment and Delivery System
🎯 Objective:
Improve outcomes and reduce inefficiencies in care delivery.
✅ Key Actions:
Move away from fee-for-service to value-based care models (like Accountable Care Organizations).
Incentivize preventive care, chronic disease management, and telemedicine.
Invest in primary care and mental health services as the foundation of affordable care.
Streamline billing systems and administrative procedures (which account for up to 30% of costs in the U.S.).
📘 Fund the System Fairly and Sustainably
🎯 Objective:
Ensure health care affordability without jeopardizing federal finances.
✅ Key Actions:
Introduce a progressive health care surtax on incomes above $500,000 annually.
Raise the Medicare payroll tax slightly for high earners.
Tax capital gains and investment income at equivalent rates as wages for high-income households.
Audit and reduce wasteful federal health expenditures.
Create a Federal Health Innovation Fund to pilot cost-saving technologies and delivery methods.
TAKE ACTION – Contact Congress
(How to contact Congress) click here
Congressional Committees That Oversee Health Care
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP)
- Jurisdiction: Public health, biomedical research (NIH, CDC, FDA), mental health, medical education, and insurance regulation
- Programs: ACA, FDA, CDC, NIH, and health workforce policy.
Senate Committee on Finance
- Jurisdiction: Federal health insurance programs: Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA tax credits, and hospital payments.
- Key Role: Controls the financial underpinnings of U.S. health care.
House Committee on Energy and Commerce
- Jurisdiction: Public health, food and drug safety, biomedical research (NIH, CDC), mental health, and private insurance markets.
- Oversight Areas: ACA marketplaces, Medicare Advantage, FDA regulation, and public health emergencies.
- Subcommittees: Health; Oversight and Investigations.
House Committee on Ways and Means
- Jurisdiction: Medicare, tax-related provisions of health care (e.g., ACA subsidies), and Social Security.
- Oversight Areas: Health care financing, provider reimbursement, and senior care.
House Committee on Education and the Workforce
- Jurisdiction: Employer-sponsored insurance, ERISA, and health benefits for workers.
- Role: Addresses workforce health issues, wellness programs, and insurance regulation under employer plans.
🧩 Related Committees (With Partial Oversight)
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Appropriations Committees (House & Senate): Control annual funding for HHS, NIH, CDC, CMS.
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Veterans’ Affairs Committees: Oversee health services provided by the VA.
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Budget Committees: Review long-term fiscal impacts of health programs.