Mechele Dickerson

businesses have to assume the cost.

So rather than pushing the cost onto employees, tell them that, you know, whether we wanna say that there are caps on what they can charge or, but businesses can lobby Congress and be much more effective

in coming up with a solution that individual employees can.

I will also say, and this is not necessarily a model that can be scaled, but when we look at the way that our military personnel in this country, how they receive health insurance, they receive it from the government.

Is it perfect?

They would probably say no.

Is everyone covered?

Yes, they are.

So we have to do something radical because we can't continue with the status quo.

And I would also, again, thinking back to the past, although I'm not going to stick saying the past, I want us to be thinking in terms of the future.

But the reason that we have so many employee benefits tied into work was because in World War II, there was wage controls.

So they couldn't increase wages.

So what businesses did is say, oh, but we can give you non-wage benefits.

Once that happened, it became the norm.

And so one of the things I want political leaders to do is to say, well, if it wasn't the norm until we created it, maybe we can create something new and that'll then become the norm.

Exactly.

And they're always afraid that, well, I have to have the best health care and I have to have every single procedure that I want.

And that's great in theory until you lose your job and then you have no health care.

So one of the discussions we're going to have to have is to ask people, are you going to fight for what you have right now, knowing that if you lose your job, you have nothing?

Yeah.