Jason Lewis, a former U.S. Representative and now a candidate for the U.S. Senate, continued his push for better and more affordable healthcare Wednesday by holding a rural roundtable focusing on the topic at the Sanford Medical facilities in Luverne, Minnesota.
In Luverne, he pointed out that “The Democrats’ radical proposals are an admission that Obamacare is not working as intended.”
Lewis goes on to say, “In fact, while the CBO had predicted over 25 million enrollees on exchanges like MNsure by now, the latest federal numbers show just 11 million can afford the skyrocketing costs of health care. It’s time for real reform.”
Lewis adds that his common-sense reforms aim to “lower insurance premiums and provide more options with private, portable plans, including maintaining popular employer-based benefits instead of removing 160 million Americans from their existing group plans.”
His plan stands in stark contrast to Senator Tina Smith as she garners “support for, at most reasonable estimates, a $32 trillion ‘Medicare for All’ socialist scheme that would upend our current health insurance system, abolish private plans, and eliminate Medicare for seniors as we know it,” Lewis added.
During the roundtable at Sanford Medical, Lewis unveiled some of the details of his plan for improving healthcare access for all Minnesotans, including:
- Allowing pre-tax dollars for all health care expenses on the individual market, finally equaling the tax treatment with employer-based coverage
- Continuing the Trump administration’s reform efforts by making small business ‘association pools’ and inexpensive shorter-term plans permanent
- Lowering the cost of delivery through new technologies, such as Sanford’s ‘telestroke’ program, so rural physicians can quickly diagnose patients via video
- Ending the spiraling premium costs for preexisting conditions by establishing invisible pools for the hard-to-insure
- Requiring pharmaceutical benefits managers’ rebates to be passed on to consumers, and allow treatments for chronic conditions (such as insulin, inhalers) to be covered as preventative
- Encouraging quicker development of generics and biosimilars by ending the pharmaceutical practice of ‘evergreening’ expiring patents
