jews in the d

Debbie Stabenow continued from page 17

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tem for pricing prescription drugs is
rigged and not transparent, so people
don’t know what the drugs really
cost. I believe that Medicare should
be able to negotiate group prices, and
we should allow safe FDA-approved
medicine to go back and forth from
Canada.
Another thing I’m trying to stop is
“gag clauses” for pharmacists, which
prevent them from telling customers
when their co-pay is higher than the
price of the medication. That bill is
moving through the Senate now.
Also, the Affordable Care Act
made it clear that you can’t discrimi-
nate on pre-existing conditions. The
Trump administration is committed
to changing those rules. It has now
allowed what we call junk plans to be
put on the market. These plans cost
less, but they don’t cover anything.
Several us are working to organize
and educate people about the risks
to their healthcare. If the ACA is
dismantled, people who have pre-ex-
isting conditions may end up being
priced out of the market.
Q: Your ideas to improve mental
health care in our country?

DS: Structurally, we need to
change the way we fund community
mental health and addiction services.
For mental health care, most of the
funding comes from grants. In a
community setting, mental health
care providers get paid much less
than doctors or other healthcare pro-
viders. When the grant runs out, so
does the treatment.
One out of five people in our
country has a treatable mental ill-
ness. We need to treat it like any
other health condition. The same
thing with addiction. I authored the
mental health parity provisions in
the Affordable Care Act, which now
are being undermined because insur-
ance can now be offered without
having mental health parity because
of new rules from the Trump admin-
istration.
I’m also working on eliminating
stigma with outreach on college cam-
puses and high schools about how to
talk about mental illness. One of the
biggest problems in getting help is
that no one wants to talk about their
mental health challenges. ■

John James continued from page 17

there in the workforce. We need crim-
inal justice reform, and we need to
take down the regulatory barriers that
would stifle entrepreneurship, inno-
vation and job creation. We still have
jobs that are open because we haven’t
trained folks.
In order to invest in education like
this, you need to broaden the tax base
rather than just increase the tax rate.
A pro-business environment would
attract talent and companies. I think
that giving money back to the people
who’ve earned it, enabling people to
compete, providing better education
and looking at economic opportunity
are all things that we need to do.
Q: How would you improve access
to healthcare?
JJ: The way you lower costs and
increase quality of care is through
transparency and reform. Tort reform,
regulatory reform and increasing
transparency would drop prices pre-
cipitously and increase quality of care
exponentially.
I believe in a patient-centered,
market-based approach that must

20

October 18 • 2018

jn

take care of pre-existing conditions. I
truly believe that patients and doctors
should be empowered, not the insur-
ance companies or the federal govern-
ment.
Q: Your ideas to improve mental
health care in our country?
JJ: We need more mental health
research for one. But I also need to
think we need to look at an over-
whelming number of our teens engag-
ing in social media and the damage
that could potentially do to their
psyches. Decades ago, people were
dying from emphysema and lung
cancer. We realized that cigarettes
were the culprit. I believe that social
media is the Philip Morris of today.
Facebook, Instagram and YouTube
are having negative impacts on the
mental health of our youth … the
bullying, the shaming, the depression
and anxiety that come from looking
at everyone’s best self and feeling, in
some way, inferior. Parents should
have the right to know and regulate
what their children are accessing on
social media at all times. ■