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Part One:
We chat with Kristin Jordan Shamus, a journalist covering health and gender for the Detroit Free Press, about “the most expensive disease in America: Alzheimer’s. As the baby boomers continue to age, the number of Alzhemier’s patients will soar. And the cost of their health care could well break the Medicare system. This could be another argument for including young and healthy Americans in a Medicare for All program, as some politicians are recommending.
Part Two:
We meet with Democratic presidential candidate John Delaney, a former member of Congress from Maryland and an entrepreneur. He believes the number one problem at this time is the deep divisions among our people. While we have to address the many serious issues that the U.S. faces in this century (including in the era of Trump), it is crucial that we return our core sense of common purpose as a country, and work *together* to solve our problems. And we must prepare our children and our citizens for the task of building a better world together.
We discussed Delaney’s well-publicized opposition to the proposal for Medicare for All. He agrees that every American should be able to obtain quality health care. But he is not sure that our medical bills will get paid if the government is the only source to pay for health care. Currently, Medicare pays only 80% of medical bills, while Medicaid pays 95%. Health care providers might close down if this is their only source of payment.
Instead, Delaney proposes a different kind of universal health care system. It is a mixed model, like the one currently in place in Germany. Every child born in America would have a right to a government-paid health plan like Medicare. If they wish, they could choose to opt out of the government plan, and purchase their own health insurance on the private market. If they do opt out, they would receive a tax credit from the government. But the subsidy would only cover about 20% of the cost of their health insurance.
Delaney’s plan would be similar to the current Medicare system for seniors. The individual could choose the basic government plan, which would operate like their major medical (catastrophic) insurance. Then, in addition, s/he would have the option to buy additional supplemental plans which would allow people to choose any medical provider they want, including when referred to a specialist.
We also discussed Cong. Delaney’s rejection of the Green New Deal (GND). He believes that the ideas behind it are important, but in addition to ideas, we have to consider how quickly we can make changes happen. The GND does not include any kind of transition plan. It is true that climate solutions require urgent action if the planet is to survive, but any proposed solution would have to actually succeed in the real world.
Delaney’s climate plan, modeled on that of British Columbia in Canada, is expected to reduce greenhouse gases by 90%. It contains four parts: a carbon tax (with the proceeds returned to the people as tax credits); a 6-fold increase in the Dept of Energy’s budget for research in battery and storage technology; cut $5 billion per year from subsidies to fossil fuel companies and invest the money instead into creating a market for “negative emissions technologies” which would extract carbon out of the atmosphere. This is what we did with wind and solar, in order to bring the price down so the naysayers (and the market) cannot say that saving the planet is “too expensive.” (Even if we achieve our Net Zero goal and cease adding new carbon to the atmosphere, we still have no means of dealing with 30% of the carbons unless we develop new technology to extract that 30%.)
The fourth part of the plan addresses the human impact of eliminating a lot of people’s jobs in industries which are now contributing to global warming. Delaney would increase the subsidies for renewable energy, so people can pay to improve the energy-efficiency of their homes (and assistance from a “climate corps” of high school graduates – similar to the peace corps or vista – who help folks in their communities). He would also build a carbon dioxide pipeline – located in the American heartland – near the people who may be losing their old jobs and have not yet been trained to transition to “greener” jobs.
