1. Primary care is an essential service, like police and fire protection, roads, garbage pickup, clean water supply, or public education, one that that communities can and should provide for themselves. (The cost of primary care is actually similar to or less than the cost of those other services, when measured per-resident per-year.)
2. Primary care for all is a critical part of public health.  It is a necessary condition to produce the best public health outcomes at the lowest cost, because it can deliver evidence-based prevention and cost-effective community-located urgent and chronic care medical services to the entire population, if adequately resourced.  Lacking universal primary care, we overspend on Emergency Rooms, specialty and hospital care, and undersupply prevention and chronic care management that works.
3. State and Federal health policy should focus on the delivery system.  Payment reform is critical but can’t be effective at addressing the health needs of the population without a well-articulated, well-designed, and well-deployed primary care-based delivery system.
4. Workforce is a state level responsibility and focused state-level advocacy is needed to address it.  There is a largely unaddressed opportunity for Federal support of state workforce initiatives, as well as Federal policy changes around Graduate Medical Education funding to address workforce, and Medicare and Medicaid payment policy, which advocacy can help address.

Download Key Policy Ideas

Single Payer/Medicare for All is a health policy innovation that would replace most health insurance with government funded or run health insurance for all Americans.  It is a funding strategy for healthcare that is usually supported by the political left. It has been led for forty years by our colleagues, mentors, heroes, allies, and friends.

We acknowledge their importance and contribution, and we support their work.

We note that PC4AA is single payer for primary care in blue states

Direct Primary Care is a health policy innovation in which patients pay their primary care doctors directly, usually by monthly subscription. Most direct primary care doctors limit the number of patients they will care for, which means they have more time for each person and their lives as health professionals are more manageable.

Direct Primary Care doesn’t have a clear political affiliation although some think it has a libertarian flavor.

We honor the 2000 plus DPC doctors as pioneers, deeply devoted to their patients and communities, who are showing the nation how personal and effective primary care can and should be.

Medical and health savings accounts are a health policy innovation focused on how health services are purchased. 

Health savings accounts are bank accounts that can only be used for health-related expenses.  The money in them grows free of income tax, like IRAs.

People with HSAs must also have high deductible health insurance, so they are financially protected against medical catastrophe.  They can use the funds in their HSA for routine health expenses, but if they do so they are spending their own money, which provides an incentive to think about health care spending and health care utilization critically.

When everyone in the US has primary care,  you won’t need to worry as much about getting sick because you’ll have a doctor to help you stay healthy and catch problems early. If you do get sick, you’ll have a doctor you can see without your family having to worry too much about money. This can help you get better faster.  Also, when everyone can see a doctor, sicknesses won’t spread as easily, so you’ll be less likely to catch something from others.

Even better, when all Americans have a family doctor and a great primary care practice, we’ll save billions of tax dollars, money we now waste on unnecessary medical care.

Some of that can be used to build safe and healthy housing, improve public education, build better parks and improve public transportation, so you’ll have a better life, and so we can be a better and healthier nation.

We want you to join and work with others in your own community even more than we want your money.  But all donations are needed and appreciated.  All the funds we raise are spent on hiring organizers, the people who help support local work groups by organizing meetings and sending people links and reminders, or on staff to produce, publicize and coordinate our community zooms and other educational activities that bring people together to fix the healthcare mess.