* Press release from yesterday…

Access to quality, affordable health care is the most fundamental basis for quality of life. Chris Kennedy, Democratic candidate for governor, and his running mate, Ra Joy, released their health care plan today to put Illinois on a path to accessible, affordable health care.

“Illinois can play a major role in ensuring that every resident has access to health care and quality healthcare experiences at all stages of life,” Kennedy said. “No individual or family should suffer for lack of access to care, and no individual or family should suffer because they cannot afford health care.

“Our state thrives when our residents are healthy and able to contribute fully to society. We envision a state where high-quality health care is easily accessible, affordable, and delivered with compassion.”

The campaign’s plan highlights women’s healthcare. Protecting a woman’s right to chose, providing broader access to birth control, and standardizing the state’s sex education curriculum to be inclusive of women’s needs is imperative.

The standardization of the state’s sex education will include information about birth control, Plan B, abortion, sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape, and tools for survivors. The increase in information is vital to future of our state.

The campaign’s plan is inclusive and includes a path to a single-payer system that starts by creating a state-backed public option of large-scale, Illinois-based employers and pre-existing municipal insurance pools to allow them to aggregate together as one negotiating entity to drive down costs. This will reduce our reliance on costly, profit-driven insurance companies and provide modern, accessible, and just coverage to all.

The employer-backed option will be made available to anyone in the state—including undocumented immigrants—which will further drive down costs for plan holders and the overall healthcare market in Illinois.

The campaign’s healthcare plan also proposes a $15 minimum wage bill that will be a required base minimum pay for all caregivers and healthcare workers. License-exempt caregivers who are caring for our children—often the children of low-income families—should not be earning less than minimum wage. Some license-exempt providers are earning as little as $16.22 per day.

“This is unacceptable. No one who works a full-time job should be forced to live in poverty,” Kennedy said.

The plan also includes works a program to treat addiction. The opioid crisis is claiming lives across our state: in big cities like Chicago, which have long suffered from government indifference to issues of addiction—particularly in predominantly minority communities—and in rural areas, where addiction to opioids has exploded in recent years. A Kennedy/Joy administration will follow Vermont’s innovative lead by adopting a Hub and Spoke model to treat addiction.

* From the proposal…

On the Path to Single-Payer: A State-Backed Public Option

A Kennedy/Joy administration will put Illinois on a path to a single-payer system. We will start by creating a state-backed public option of large-scale, Illinois-based employers and pre-existing municipal insurance pools to allow them to aggregate together as one negotiating entity to drive down costs. This will reduce our reliance on costly, profit-driven insurance companies and provide modern, accessible, and just coverage to all.

These aggregated insurance pools will emerge as an economic and political force in the state with clout, leverage, and contacts to overcome the insurance lobby. By allowing the largest employers in the state to work together to negotiate the cost of health coverage and drug prices, existing insurance companies will become nothing more than benefits managers.

Once established, with a solid foundation of committed members and employers, the employer-backed option will be made available to anyone in the state—including undocumented immigrants—which will further drive down costs for plan holders and the overall health care market in Illinois. […]

Medicaid Buy-In Program

Every person in our state should have access to affordable, quality health insurance. However, for a family of four in Illinois, the federal government will only subsidize the cost of monthly premiums if that family’s net income is $98,400 or less. As premiums rise due to decisions by the republicans in Washington, but income levels stay the same, there will be a gap in coverage, a so-called “donut” of people, who do not qualify for Medicaid but whose premiums are too high to be affordable.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will create a Medicaid Buy-In Program to allow those families who cannot afford a plan on the Health Care Exchange but who also don’t qualify for Medicaid to pay a less expensive premium, based on their income, in order to receive Medicaid coverage.

Thoughts?