002 – What America’s Health System Should Look Like – with Emma Sandoe

Show Notes

What Should America’s Health System Look Like?

Vikrum speaks with Emma Sandoe (profile), who previously worked for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services serving as the Medicaid spokesperson and working on HealthCare.gov communications as well as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Center.  She also worked in the Department of Health and Human Services Budget Office as the Affordable Care Act coordinator and at the Center for American Progress.

The Capitol Hill health care fight sure seemed dead. After Republican proposals to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, failed to pass a Republican-controlled Congress, lawmakers looked poised to move on to other topics, like a tax overhaul. But this week, proposals from both the left and the right are grabbing headlines. (Meanwhile, some members are also wrangling over how they can stabilize Obamacare.)

On Wednesday came a “Medicare for All” bill from Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders — his attempt to push single-payer health care, long one of his favorite causes. In a Wednesday op-ed in the New York Times, the former presidential candidate wrote about single-payer health care as a moral issue, giving it his familiar populist framing.

“We remain the only major country on earth that allows chief executives and stockholders in the health care industry to get incredibly rich, while tens of millions of people suffer because they can’t get the health care they need,” he wrote. “This is not what the United States should be about.”

Sandoe earned a Masters in Public Health from George Washington University and attended UC San Diego for undergraduate studies. Sandor is currently a PhD candidate in the Harvard Program in Health Policy studying Political Analysis.

 

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What is American Enough?

America's identity is evolving in real time. Immigrants are being scoffed at for looking a certain way and not being "American" enough. Transgender individuals are being determined not "fit enough" to serve in our military. Sexual assault and neo-nazi behavior is being condoned by the Oval Office. The First Amendment is being ridiculed. And, America's moral authority is eroding internationally, begging the question of who is "enough" of an American ally.

Former Obama White House senior advisor and Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of Commerce, Vikrum Aiyer, is joined by journalists, comedians, politicians, activists, and listeners, to unpack this crucial existential moment for our nation's identity.