HEALTH CARE FOR ALL

Ricky believes in an America that strongly supports and administers a comprehensive universal public health care system. The time has come for the American health care system to abandon—once and for all—its culture and practice of choosing profits over the general welfare of its people. It is a travesty that the United States of America remains the sole industrialized nation in the Western World that fails to guarantee health care to everyone living within its borders.

Health care ought to formally fall under the federal government's responsibility to preserve the general welfare of the people residing within its borders, and away from yet another means by which big corporations can enrich themselves. Public health and wellness should not be a profitable industry, but a lifelong service from prenatal through end-of-life care.

In this day and age, it just doesn't make any sense for America to be freely willing to essentially print money in order to further engorge the Military Industrial Complex, but then claim it is either "impossible" or "too expensive" to ensure that no American is able to be given the health care that they so desperately need due to insurance technicalities. Families should never have to worry about whether a doctor "accepts their insurance plan." We must catch up with the world.

Ricky believes in an America where health care is a social responsibility that all citizens and taxpaying residents have a hand in upholding for one another, through the hard work and entrepreneurialism that makes us great. Whether someone is employed or not should [and will] not determine anyone's access to health care. Ricky believes in universal health care for all—period.

Ricky believes that a woman's health care decisions are just that—her own. In what many Americans believe is a free society, a woman's right to make important health care decisions concerning what is happening to her body is one that must not be abridged beyond what is already settled law. 

This includes access to birth control, abortions, and any other necessary medical need. The time has come for government to put an end to legislation governing the inside of a woman's body, and to pass legislation granting her the means by which she can better care for it.

Under Ricky's health care plan, all human beings capable of giving birth will have the right to make their own reproductive decisions as they see fit, and that person's right to an abortion will be fundamental and shall not be abridged under any circumstances.

America cannot move forward as a society if we continue to place lawmaking power in the hands of those that are hellbent on abridging these long-settled health care rights, at the behest of a cheap campaign donation spike or religious appeasement. 

Ricky believes that the United States has the potential to become the healthiest country in the world and a gold standard for health management, and this begins with education.

As previously stated elsewhere, an uneducated population is a weak one. Ricky believes that all Americans should be well-informed on health care, beginning with sex education and access to sanitation products in school, through higher learning addressing sexually-transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS and syphilis.

As a country, Ricky believes, we owe it to all people living within these boards to make this information readily available to all those that seek it, and it must be included in our school programs. Children must understand the nuances of health and wellness.

Ricky believes in the power and importance of America's nurses. They are the ones carrying the greatest load in hospitals and other medical settings, engaging directly with patients, and administering treatment, likely on the orders of a physician or physician's assistant. As a community, we do not appreciate these hardworking members of the medical field enough.

With that in mind, Ricky believes that we need more nurses and more programs better preparing them for the workforce. Along with additional investments in our national health care system, Ricky believes we must further support programs that encourage additional nurses in our hospitals, clinics, and schools, as well as including them within our larger labor reform proposals. 

A stronger, better-equipped nurseforce is a stronger, better American health care system. An improved American health care system can be built, one piece after another, but it must begin with the way our nurses are treated, paid, scheduled, trained, and respected. Our nurseforce is the backbone of our health care system here in America, and we must stop at nothing to make sure that is properly recognized.

Ricky believes in an America that, for once and for all, puts an end to the failed War on Drugs. It is clear that this failed law enforcement initiative disproportionately affects communities of color, incarcerating millions of African and Hispanic-Americans throughout the years. Any and all substance abuse situations must not be treated as a crime, but as a health issue in need of medical attention. 

We must establish a radical new drug policy. It's time to decriminalize and regulate recreational cannabis use, and all incarcerated individuals there for non-violent cannabis use should be freed and see their records wiped clean. It's time to move forward, whether the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry likes it or not. Lives are at stake in this country.

Ricky will support any legislative measure that:

• Decriminalizes, taxes, and regulates the safe sale and use of cannabis;
• Retroactively expunges any and all non-violent cannabis-related criminal records; and 
• Redirects any and all public revenues towards the continued development of a universal health care system, tuition/debt-free higher education, and further public services.