Jill Stein presidential campaign, 2016/Healthcare
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This page was current as of the 2016 election.
The overview of the issue below was current as of the 2016 election.
A Gallup poll conducted in late August 2016 found that 44 percent of Americans supported Obamacare, and 51 percent disapproved of it. The number of uninsured Americans dropped after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, became law on March 23, 2010. In 2016, 11 percent of Americans remained uninsured compared to 16 percent in 2010. Despite this success, health insurers were concerned about Obamacare's financial sustainability and fewer participants were reporting that the law had helped their family. After six years, more than half of Americans said Obamacare had no effect on them or their family.[2]
On October 24, 2016, a government report was released that found that premiums were expected to rise 22 percent in 2017 under Obamacare. Federal subsidies would offset some of the cost.[3] As a result, healthcare became a frequently discussed issue in the final two weeks of the election.
See below what Jill Stein and the Green Party Platform said about healthcare.
| CANDIDATE SUMMARY | |
Stein on healthcare
- Stein spoke about several Colorado ballot measures at a campaign event in Denver on August 28, 2016, saying, “Colorado is leading the charge. These are the things we need to do at the national level.” Stein offered praise for a Medicare-expansion ballot measure. She said, “Ultimately, we want to go to a single-payer system” and the ballot measure “gets us started.”[4] In an interview with The Colorado Independent on August 27, 2016, however, Stein said she does not endorse the plan. “I don’t want to throw my weight behind an endorsement at this point. But I would certainly respect anyone who sees fit to work on it,” said Stein.[5]
- At a town hall event hosted by CNN on August 17, 2016, Stein was asked if she was “anti-vaccine.” Stein said, “I think there's kind of an effort to divert the conversation from our actual agenda. The idea that I oppose vaccines is completely ridiculous.”[6]
- In an interview with The Washington Post published on July 29, 2016, Jill Stein said that while vaccines were “an invaluable medication,” she was concerned with vaccine safety and government oversight of mandatory vaccinations. "Like any medication, they also should be — what shall we say? — approved by a regulatory board that people can trust. And I think right now, that is the problem. That people do not trust a Food and Drug Administration, or even the CDC for that matter, where corporate influence and the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of influence."[7]
- In a February 8, 2016, interview with Robert Scheer, Stein said her approach to healthcare is similar to Bernie Sanders'. She explained, "The one place we differ from Bernie on health care is by defending the Affordable Care Act, or saying that we're going to build on the Affordable Care Act, because that's the mythology that the health insurance system uses, that we can grow our way incrementally to a single-payer system. And you can't; you really have to kiss it goodbye and expand Medicare in one fell swoop, which can be done very quickly and efficiently."[8]
- During a February 5, 2016, interview, Jill Stein described how her "Green New Deal" would reduce healthcare costs. She said, "[W]hen you shut down the endless stream of pollution into our air, our water, our consumer products, etc., that derive from fossil fuels, we get so much healthier that it massively reduces our health care costs. And this is not just a hypothetical. This actually happened in the country of Cuba when their oil pipeline went down, so we know this is really true. When you take the pollution out of the air, you enable people to eat a fresh and healthy and sustainable food system and you integrate public transportation into walking and biking so we can actually use our own motor power to get places, that creates the real foundation for health that we in this country spend $3 trillion a year for. And we are only getting sicker; we are not getting better."[9]
- In a November 3, 2015, interview, Jill Stein said she would push for a Medicare-for-all system in her first 100 days if elected president. "The...thing that we will do is create health care as a human right, which is critical and also must be done in order for people to be productive and creative members of society we need to be healthy. And we’ll actually save money, not lose money, by moving to an improved Medicare-for-all, which is far simpler and saves about US$400 billion a year in waste, paper pushing, and pharmaceutical and insurance company profiteering. That money can be put toward covering everyone comprehensively."[10]
- On Stein's 2016 presidential campaign website, she stated she would like to "[e]stablish an improved 'Medicare For All' single-payer public health insurance program to provide everyone with quality health care, at huge savings."[11]
- In the 2012 "People's State of the Union," responding to President Obama's "State of the Union" address, Stein said, "[M]y administration will honor the right to quality health care through an improved Medicare for All program. This will provide comprehensive care for all. It will be free to consumers at the point of delivery, but will save money overall by reducing the massive wasteful health insurance bureaucracy and by stabilizing medical inflation. And it restores freedom of choice so you pick your health care provider, and your care is decided by you and your provider– not by a profiteering insurance executive. This will be federally financed and democratically controlled."[12]
- Read what other presidential candidates said about healthcare.
| The 2016 Green Party Platform on healthcare | ||||||
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Recent news
This section links to a Google news search for the term Jill + Stein + Healthcare
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Democracy Now, "Green Party’s Jill Stein Announces She Is Running for President," June 22, 2015
- ↑ Gallup, "More Americans Negative Than Positive About ACA," September 8, 2016
- ↑ NPR, "Rates Up 22 Percent For Obamacare Plans, But Subsidies Rise, Too," October 24, 2016
- ↑ The Denver Post, "Green Party’s Jill Stein says Colorado leading the way to the future," August 28, 2016
- ↑ The Colorado Independent, "In Colorado, Green Party’s Jill Stein won’t endorse the ColoradoCare universal healthcare ballot measure," August 27, 2016
- ↑ CNN, "Jill Stein: I will have trouble sleeping at night if either Trump or Clinton is elected," August 17, 2016
- ↑ The Washington Post, "Jill Stein on vaccines: People have ‘real questions’," July 29, 2016
- ↑ Huffington Post, "Scheer Intelligence: Jill Stein-Presidential Candidate," February 8, 2016
- ↑ Political People Blog, "Dr. Jill Stein on Foreign Policy, Bernie Sanders and a 'Green New Deal,'" February 5, 2016
- ↑ teleSUR, "US Presidential Candidate Jill Stein: I Want to Be President to Save the World," November 3, 2015
- ↑ Jill 2016, "Power to the People Plan," accessed July 7, 2015
- ↑ ProCon.org, "Text: People's State of the Union," accessed July 7, 2015
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Green Party, "The 2016 Green Party Platform on Social Justice," accessed August 23, 2016
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