To reduce healthcare costs, we need to encourage healthy lifestyle choices and focus on prevention and cures, rather than just expensive treatments.

The most effective way to reduce long-term healthcare costs is to encourage a healthier society. Universal healthcare will stifle innovation and encourage even more inefficiency and corruption in the healthcare industry.

Six in ten Americans live with at least one chronic disease, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, or diabetes. These and other lifestyle diseases, which are commonly caused by or exacerbated by alcohol, drugs, smoking abuse, lack of physical activity, and unhealthy eating, are the leading causes of death and disability in America, and are a leading driver of health care costs.

We should reduce taxes for people who make responsible choices and prosecute those who profit from prescribing addictive drugs for their own financial gain.

• Protect health insurance coverage for everyone with pre-existing conditions
• Provide incentives, including tax breaks, for healthy lifestyle choices
• End the opioid epidemic
• Prohibit food stamps from being used to buy junk food

Healthcare reform ideas to address some chronic and lifestyle-influenced diseases:

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Case Study: Diabetes

More than 30 million Americans have diabetes. Diagnosed diabetes costs $327 billion a year (as of 2017, and it was only $245bn in 2012, a 26 % increase in 5 years). 84 million Americans have pre-diabetes, $1 in $7 million health care dollars is spent treating diabetes and its complications.

Our health policy proposal is to incentivize people to get off insulin through changing their diet and exercise habits, and require private insurance or Medicaid/Medicare to share those cost savings with those persons with diabetes.

Case Study: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

SNAP, the federal government food stamp program, spends $70 billion a year to provide foods to families and persons in need. Of this, a significant percentage is spent on sugary drinks and junk food.

Low-income American adults now consume nearly two sugar-sweetened beverage servings a day, and for every one to two daily servings consumed, the lifetime risk of developing diabetes increases by 30%. I propose excluding sugary drinks and junk food from the SNAP program, and will support policies that give more Americans better access to fresh and healthy food choices.

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