Health care and a candidate’s health plan are important to voters because the debate over health care encompasses topics ranging from income disparity to taxes to personal responsibility.  The topic of health care also provokes debate about the concept of a right to health; some voters think that everyone should be guaranteed basic health care while others are understandably reluctant to identify an intrinsic ‘right to health care’ because expanding the concept of natural rights perhaps cheapens or dilutes the original concept of rights in America.  Your campaign, however, should take the view that you have supported in the past and that is most likely to garner votes: that health care should be afforded to all citizens, but that responsible use of health care is a priority.  This issue is important to voters when evaluating candidates because voters see a candidate’s stance on health care as reflecting his or her attitudes about big business, personal responsibility, the role of government, and his or her overall compassion and ability to solve problems.

A look at your record in the South Dakota legislature and your previous speeches and writings as a consumer advocate lays the groundwork for your health plan: voters do not want to see you backtrack on the position that you have already developed.  They expect you to work towards health coverage for all Americans while simultaneously addressing the unnecessary tests and surgeries that have helped create the current bloated national health system.  You have recognized that the health system is set up both to discourage prevention of common serious ailments and to encourage the over-treatment of serious illnesses.  A program with just a few tenets is best – such a plan is easier for you to talk about to the media and with voters, and less vulnerable to criticism for being unfeasibly complex.  Your health program would put forward two overarching tenets: every American citizen must have insurance for health disasters, those conditions or incidents which are the rarest but most expensive; while preventative care paid for by Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs, including in insuring governmental employees, must be made significantly more affordable.  Requiring those employers who do offer health insurance to provide health coverage for catastrophes and federally insuring those who are unemployed or uninsurable is a compromise with opponents of employer mandates; catastrophic health care coverage does not cover the routine medical costs that most people incur and does not place so large a burden on employers and mandating comprehensive insurance would.  Having catastrophic health coverage is crucial because it prevents people, especially the working poor, from sinking into extreme debt in times of unforeseen health issues.  The preventative care covered by your second tenet includes things such as yearly blood pressure and cholesterol screenings, mammograms, colonoscopies, and prostate exams for those above age 40, and diabetes treatment for those of any age.  Campaigning with this plan, with two central tenets, has advantages over defending programs proposed by leaders in the past because it does not open itself to criticism by mandating that employers provide full health coverage and its focus on making preventative care more affordable logically anticipates reductions in the cost of serious conditions that are generally preventable (examples include heart disease, certain types of cancers, complications of diabetes).  Also, making sweeping changes in the preventative care reimbursement for those using government-provided insurance or coverage would encourage private employers to provide similar, competitive benefits.  Providing catastrophic health care coverage to help keep people out of debt and encouraging preventative care to avoid higher-cost future conditions will be more cost effective for all involved.  Overall, the plan encourages responsible behavior by the government, employers, and American citizens in general.  Making the centerpiece of your plan an emphasis on “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” will help make American health care more efficient and more affordable.   

Promoting a plan which discourages medical excesses presents potential challenges: some of the drug companies which promote their medications for serious but preventable conditions with whimsical advertisements will be opposed to your health plan, as well as any companies that manage to profit off of the inefficiencies of the current system.  After all, since preventative medicine consists in almost all cases of exercise and wholesome food, plus routine care for some populations, such as for those with diabetes, a platform emphasizing this approach is bound to have corporate opposition.  Some employers and the insurers they work with will balk at the idea of having to add catastrophic coverage to the plans they offer, disregarding the future benefits of your proposed plan.  Fear not, however, for the greatest challenge in promoting your health plan is also the greatest potential remedy for countering the above-mentioned opponents: winning over the general public and likely voters. 

Convincing voters that your health plan will be effective, and in turn winning their votes, will require soothing numerous fears.  Those who have benefited under the current system need to be convinced that your health plan will not represent a reduction in the quality of American health care; those who have gone uninsured or under-treated in the past must feel that your health plan will address their situations.  The communication of the health plan to the public must emphasize its leanness and its potential for change, in a simple way that does not connote notions of an overbearing bureaucracy, excessive rules and loopholes, and in general the complexity which turns voters away, infamously contributing to the failure of the Clinton health plan in 1994, for example.  Knowing the above, then, the plan for communicating the health plan to the public is relatively simple.  Publish an accessible, readable outline of the plan on the campaign website.  Take to the airwaves, making sure that in voicing the plan on television and in radio interviews you speak knowledgeably but without bogging down your responses with the enumerated, overly-considered speech that prompts voters to think of a candidate as cold and uninteresting.  The campaign will work to get you onto a variety of media outlets: The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, a Sunday morning policy-wonk television roundtable, a Style section interview with the Washington Post - places where you can reach out to a variety of voters.  This is a solid and defensible health plan, and your independency means that your plan addresses the major flaws of the plans proffered by the usual two parties.  When answering questions, think positively, emphasizing how your plan would improve the current health system without becoming petulant and negative.  While speaking in different states and regions, do not speak only of the national benefits of the plan, instead appeal to the locals’ experiences with health care.  You are the first third-party candidate with a real chance to win the Presidency, and you have gotten this far because voters like you.  There is no reason that you will not be able to convince the growing numbers of unaffiliated or swing voters that you present the best health plan and the best vision for national leadership for the next four years.

Sources:
Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Health Insurance Coverage in America: 2003 Data Update, November 2004.

Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, The Uninsured: A Primer, November 2004.