Nurse Tells 2020 Hopefuls: Focus On Patients, Not Politics

WASHINGTON – In advance of the first round of Democratic presidential primary debates this week, Catherine Prato, Ph.D., a nurse and nurse educator in the early 2020 caucus state of Nevada, is urging the nation’s leaders to focus on efforts to build and improve upon what is working in health care, not pursue Medicare for all and other one-size-fits-all government insurance systems.  In an op-ed published today by RealClearHealth, Prato warns that systems such as these represent serious risks to American patients, hospitals, health care professionals and innovation.  She writes:

Having cared for patients for nearly a decade, I agree that more should be done to expand access to quality, affordable care for all Americans.  And while, on the surface, these proposals sound like they would help achieve that, when you dig into their consequences, the sad reality is that these systems would not only threaten patients’ access to quality care, but could even cause hospital closures, a shortage of health care professionals and less innovation for new treatments and cures … And while America today is world renowned for our great strides in medical innovation, under these systems that innovation would suffer as a government payer would be more likely to opt for generic, cheaper alternatives over pricier, cutting edge procedures.  Although often touted as less extreme, in the end, so-called “buy-in” and “public option” proposals would have the same harmful effects, disrupting the marketplaces where Americans shop for coverage and moving everyone into a one-size-fits-all system run by politicians and bureaucrats.  To put it bluntly, these government insurance programs are a slippery slope to Medicare for all.

To read the full op-ed, CLICK HERE.

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