Andrew Yang on Health Care Democratic Presidential Challenger & Tech CEO

Invest in the Mental Health Emergency Response Unit

We must give country a chance to recover from coronavirus

"We despair that our government will ever rise to the challenges of our time. But we must give this country, our country, a chance to recover--and recovery is only possible with a change of leadership and new ideas," Yang continued.

Would expand Medicare but not offer a public option

Invest in "telehealth" allowing internet access to doctors

Provide comprehensive mental health coverage

Supports forced licensing of drug patents to control costs

Medicare-for-All but with private insurance

A: There is a way to provide Medicare-for-All that does not prohibit private insurance. The goal has to be to demonstrate to the American people that this Medicare plan is superior to your current insurance without pulling the rug out from under you and saying that the insurance no longer exists. Medicare for all means that you have a Medicare program that everyone can be enrolled in.

Q: So you're adopting the label, but not the bill?

A: That's correct.

Docs should focus on results, not procedure numbers

Support negotiating drug prices for Medicare outpatients

THREE CANDIDATES HAVE SIMILAR VIEWS: Jay Inslee; Wayne Messam; Beto O`Rourke.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and former Rep. Beto O`Rourke are among the handful of Democratic presidential contenders who have not jumped on board with some of the newer ideas to get the government involved in drug pricing. Wayne Messam, Andrew Yang and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee are also in this group.

Aligned with "intactivists": against circumcision

Public option would cost less than present system

Advocates for a single-payer health care system

Single-payer system solves biggest problem of over-billing

Adopting Medicare-for-all or a single-payer system will solve the biggest problems of rampant overbilling and ever-increasing costs. But Medicare still generally reimburses based on individual appointments, procedures, and tests, which maintain the incentives for doctors to do more to get paid more. There is a movement toward "value-based" or "quality-based reimbursement," which tries to measure patient outcomes, readmission rates, and the like and reward providers accordingly.

The best approach is what they do at the Cleveland Clinic--doctors simply get paid flat salaries. When doctors aren't worried about billing, they can focus on patients.

Medicare-for-All establishes a basic right

As President, I will...
• Work with Congress to create a Medicare-for-All program, or a similar program, to provide healthcare to all Americans
• Shift the way doctors are compensated to promote holistic and empathic care
• Create incentives for and invest in innovative treatment methods and methodologies

ObamaCare is only a good first step

• Yang has called the Affordable Care Act a good first step but believes the law didn't do enough to reform the nation's health care system.
• He would shift the country toward a single-payer system, with a focus on salaried physicians and holistic medicine.
• The entrepreneur's health care platform also focuses on mental health.
• He has proposed funding artificial intelligence efforts that could improve mental health services and would create a "White House psychologist corps."