Green Party on Health Care Party Platform

Thousands die each year when excluding from adequate care

• The Green Party supports single-payer universal health care and preventive care for all. We believe that health care is a right, not a privilege.
• Our current health care system lets tens of thousands of people die each year by excluding them from adequate care, while its exorbitant costs are crippling our economy. The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world without a national health care system.
• Under a universal, comprehensive, national single-payer health care system, the administrative waste of private insurance corporations would be redirected to patient care. In addition, people would gain the peace of mind in knowing that they have health care they need. No longer would people have to worry about the prospect of financial ruin if they become seriously ill, are laid off their jobs, or are injured in an accident.

ObamaCare focuses on just selling more insurance

The bottom line of Obama's comments on the health law was that more people have health insurance and insurance companies can't deny people based on pre-existing conditions. He urged everyone to make their friends and family buy insurance.

What he didn't say is that people with health insurance in the US still can't afford the care they need and face bankruptcy if they have a serious health problem. And although insurance companies cannot deny policies to people with pre-existing conditions, they have a number of ways to avoid paying for people's care.

The `health law perpetuates a health system that treats health care as a commodity so that people only receive the amount of health care they can afford rather than treating it as a public good, as does every other industrialized nation.

Mental healthcare for prisoners and homeless

A mental health care system [should] safeguard human dignity, respects individual autonomy, and protects informed consent:
• Release incarcerated prisoners with diagnosed mental disorders to secure mental health treatment centers. Ensure psychological and medical care and rehabilitation services for mentally ill prisoners.
• Prevent homelessness before it occurs by addressing its structural causes, through raising the income floor under the working poor, creating living-wage jobs, providing job training and education that will enable low-wage workers to obtain living-wage jobs, preserving and expanding affordable housing, providing affordable health care, ensuring sufficient mental health care and substance abuse services, availability of healthy food and providing effective, holistic assistance that connects vulnerable individuals with sources of income and essential services.

Universal Single-Payer Health Care for everyone in the US

Fund “Manhattan Project” for a cure for AIDS

• Increased funding for AIDS education and patient care.
• Improved technology, facilities, laboratories, researchers, staff and personnel to cure AIDS/HIV. A “Manhattan Project” for a cure is required.
• Protecting the confidentiality of all people diagnosed with AIDS/HIV or tested for HIV.
• More careful and timely approval of effective AIDS drugs by the FDA.
• No mandatory screening for AIDS/HIV; anonymous screening must be available.
• Lifting the ban prohibiting HIV positive people from entering the U.S. as visitors or as immigrants.
• Prevention awareness and access to condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS. We condemn HIV-related discrimination.
• Providing housing for homeless and poor people with AIDS/HIV.
• Providing treatment for homeless people with AIDS/HIV.
• Support for needle exchange programs and for programs to help drug addicts.

Health care is a human right

The Green Party considers health care a human right, and therefore supports a single-payer national insurance program for the United States. This program would be publicly financed at the national level, administered locally, and privately delivered, i.e., private physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers would remain private and competitive, and consumers given full choice of provider.

Nationalize health care & ensure universal coverage

The Green Party believes, based on comparison with other nations that have enacted similar programs, that such a program would be more economical and would save money in many areas. In order to enact this program, we must dismantle the current managed care system.

The current system’s high costs and widely recognized failures demand that bold, not incremental steps, be taken. The Green Party states with a clear voice its strong support for UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. We endorse NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE and UNIVERSAL ACCESS without concern for work status or health history.