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WE THE PEOPLE

The Three Adjacent Pillars

Healthcare. Childcare. Mental Health.

Now formally part of the platform, with substantiation and mathematical models

A Companion Document

Jason Robertson

Ohio · 2026

v2.2 · Created April 2026 · Repositioned May 5, 2026 for v2.10 (architectural integration) · Updated May 6, 2026 for v2.21 (universal healthcare scope: dental and vision) · Updated May 6, 2026 for v2.26.2 (SIG-3 / OPEN-4: current-state seven-pillar framing added)

Purpose of This Document

When the platform was first written, three pillars constituted the formal proposal: the Community Contribution Plan for retirement reform, Empirical Wage Floors for tax architecture, and the Sovereign Education Fund for educational access. Three other ideas were acknowledged as adjacent — important, solvable, but not yet developed to the same level of analytical rigor as the three primary pillars. This companion document was created to introduce those three adjacent pillars at the level of careful concept while keeping the formal platform narrowly focused on what had been substantiated.

Current state as of v2.26.2: The platform has matured beyond the original three-primary-three-adjacent framing. The Manifesto's cover tagline was updated from 'Three' to 'Seven' in v2.24 to reflect that the platform now formally commits to eight pillars (the Manifesto cover tagline was further updated from 'Seven' to 'Eight' in v3.2.0 with the addition of Pillar Eight: Universal Paid Family Time): Community Contribution Plan / Sovereign Fund retirement, Empirical Wage Floors, Sovereign Education Fund, universal healthcare, universal childcare, Universal Mental Health, and Civic Infrastructure. The three originally-adjacent pillars (healthcare, childcare, mental health) have been substantiated through their respective technical white papers and analytical framing documents. Civic Infrastructure has been substantially developed through Universal Broadband Access Substantiation, Emergency Services Communications Modernization, and Federal Infrastructure Fee. The historical three-primary-three-adjacent framing is preserved here for transparency about how the platform was conceived; the current commitment is the seven-pillar architecture documented in the Manifesto.

That positioning is no longer accurate. Across versions v2.0 through v2.2, the three adjacent pillars — universal healthcare, universal childcare, Universal Mental Health Access — were developed to the same standard as the original three. Each now has: an operational design, a mathematical cost model, a transition plan, contribution rate substantiation, and integration with the platform's tax architecture. The substantiation documents are in folder 05; the mathematical models are in folder 04. The citizen-facing tax-comparison documents in folder 05 reflect the contribution rates for all three: Universal Healthcare at 4% employer / 2% employee payroll, universal childcare at 0.8% employer / 0.5% employee payroll, Universal Mental Health Access at 0.5% employer / 0.3% employee payroll.

This document remains useful as a vision-level introduction to the three pillars before a reader engages with the full substantiation work. The architectural arguments here are preserved from the original v1.0 framing because the underlying logic has not changed — what changed is the level of analytical maturity at which each pillar can now be defended. Readers seeking the operational detail, cost models, and transition plans should refer to the substantiation documents named at the end of each pillar section below.

Status note: These three pillars are described as ideas under development, not as finished proposals. Funding mechanism analysis, institutional design, empirical foundations, and limitations work have not yet been completed for any of them. They are presented here to capture the nuances of the ideas and to invite engagement that may help develop them further. Subsequent revisions of this document will reflect additional analytical work as it is completed.

Each pillar shares the architectural foundation of the platform: pooled contribution, empirical anchoring where possible, and transparency by design. The values are consistent across all six pillars (three primary, three adjacent) and the Civic Infrastructure pillar added in v2.3. The platform's complete current architecture is six pillars plus Civic Infrastructure, totaling roughly $1.6-2.1 trillion in annual federal commitments at maturity, funded through the combination of payroll contributions, the Sovereign Fund's investment returns, and the platform's modified federal income tax architecture.

Adjacent Pillar: Universal Healthcare Access

The fundamental observation is straightforward. The United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world while producing health outcomes that lag most peer nations. Approximately 26 million Americans have no health insurance. Many millions more have insurance that does not adequately protect them from financial catastrophe in the event of serious illness. Medical debt is a leading cause of personal bankruptcy. The current structure produces inferior outcomes at superior costs.

The Underlying Principle

Healthcare is public infrastructure. The argument that markets allocate healthcare efficiently has been tested empirically against the experience of every other developed nation, and the results are not favorable to the market hypothesis. Countries that treat healthcare as public infrastructure produce better outcomes at lower costs across nearly every measurable dimension. The United States has chosen a hybrid approach that has captured the inefficiencies of both market and public provision while delivering the benefits of neither at full scale.

A reformed structure would treat universal healthcare access as foundational national infrastructure rather than as a market-allocated service. The mechanism for delivering this varies across successful international examples. Single-payer systems (Canada, Taiwan) operate one government insurance program. Multi-payer systems (Germany, Japan, Switzerland) operate regulated insurance markets with universal coverage mandates and price controls. Hybrid systems (United Kingdom, France) combine public provision with private supplementation. Each works. The American failure has been the inability to commit to any coherent model.

What an American Version Might Look Like

The architecture that fits most naturally with the rest of the platform is closer to the German or Japanese model than to single-payer Canada. A regulated multi-payer system with universal coverage, price controls negotiated at the national level, and integration with the existing employer-based system through transition rather than displacement. The advantages are political feasibility (it does not require eliminating the private insurance industry), administrative continuity (existing infrastructure largely continues to function), and outcome quality (Germany and Japan produce excellent health outcomes at substantially lower per-capita cost than the United States).

Covered services scope. The German baseline includes more than acute medical care: it covers preventive and restorative dental services, eye examinations and eye disease treatment, and prescription correction for children. The platform's universal healthcare commitment matches this scope. Dental coverage includes cleanings, exams, fillings, root canals, extractions, and periodontal treatment at 100 percent; orthodontic care is covered for children and adolescents; cosmetic dentistry is excluded. Vision coverage includes eye examinations and all medical and surgical treatment of eye disease at 100 percent; prescription correction (eyeglasses and contacts) is covered for children only, with adults purchasing privately or through optional supplemental insurance. Long-term care and hearing aids remain outside the current scope and are flagged as honest acknowledged gaps. The Healthcare Transition Detailed Plan and the universal healthcare Model enumerate this scope explicitly.

Funding would require its own dedicated mechanism distinct from the Sovereign Fund. Healthcare is current consumption rather than long-horizon investment, so the compound-growth instrument that funds retirement and education does not fit the use case. The likely funding mechanism is a payroll contribution similar to the Medicare HI tax, expanded to cover full medical care rather than only hospital insurance for the elderly. Existing private insurance contributions become part of this national contribution pool.

What Has Not Been Worked Out

The funding mechanism design has not been completed. The transition from the current employer-based system to a universal system is itself a multi-year analytical and political project. The interaction with existing Medicare and Medicaid programs requires explicit design. The question of cost containment, on which all serious healthcare reform turns, is not addressed in this document. The political economy of provider compensation, pharmaceutical pricing, and administrative simplification each requires its own substantial analysis.

This is not a finished proposal. It is a statement that the platform considers universal healthcare access to be foundational infrastructure that an honest reform agenda must address, while acknowledging that the analytical work to translate that values commitment into specific policy architecture remains to be done.

“The argument is not whether universal healthcare is desirable. It is whether the United States can construct an institutional path to it that preserves what works and replaces what does not. That is a project, not a slogan.”

For full substantiation, see 05_Healthcare_Transition_Detailed_Plan.docx and the universal healthcare Model in folder 04. Cost framework: $9,500/capita target, German/Japanese multi-payer model with 4% employer / 2% employee payroll funding.

Adjacent Pillar: Universal Childcare Access

Approximately twelve million American children under the age of five live with working parents who require childcare. Quality childcare costs roughly fifteen thousand dollars per child per year in most metropolitan areas. For a family with two children in care, this represents a major share of household income for most working families and an impossible expense for many. The cost falls disproportionately on women, whose workforce participation is materially affected by childcare availability and cost.

The Underlying Principle

Childcare is workforce infrastructure. When parents cannot work because care is unavailable or unaffordable, the entire economy loses the productivity those workers would have contributed. When parents work despite inadequate care arrangements, child development suffers in ways that reduce long-term outcomes. The current structure imposes a hidden tax on working families and a less hidden tax on national productivity. Other developed countries have recognized this and structured their economies accordingly.

Quebec’s universal childcare program, in operation since 1997, charges families approximately ten Canadian dollars per day for care, with the remaining cost covered by provincial funding. The program has been studied extensively. Maternal employment in Quebec rose roughly eight percentage points after implementation. Long-term child outcomes are mixed, with some studies finding positive effects and others finding modest negative effects depending on care quality. Total program cost runs approximately 0.8 percent of provincial gross domestic product.

What an American Version Might Look Like

Applied to the United States, a comparable program would cost approximately 180 billion dollars per year. This is a substantial expense, equivalent to roughly thirty percent of current federal Medicaid spending. It is also a recoverable expense in important ways: the increased workforce participation produces additional payroll tax revenue, the reduced reliance on means-tested benefit programs reduces other federal spending, and the long-term outcomes for children produce returns that economists estimate at several dollars for every dollar spent.

The program structure would establish a national framework for childcare quality, licensing, and worker compensation. Existing private childcare providers would continue to operate within this framework, receiving public funding for enrolled children. New public providers would expand capacity in underserved areas. Worker compensation would rise meaningfully — childcare workers are among the lowest-paid workers in the country despite the social value of their work, a contradiction the wage floor pillar would address but that universal childcare funding would address more directly.

Funding would require its own mechanism, similar in structure to the healthcare funding question. Current consumption rather than long-horizon investment, so a dedicated payroll contribution rather than a Sovereign Fund disbursement. The likely structure is a small percentage of payroll, on the order of one to two percent, with the burden shared between employers and employees in the same proportions as other contribution-based programs.

What Has Not Been Worked Out

The interaction between universal public funding and existing private provider structures requires careful design. The risk that public funding inflates rather than reduces childcare costs (the higher education affordability problem applied to a different sector) needs explicit treatment. Quality standards and their enforcement at national scale are non-trivial. The political coalition for universal childcare in the United States exists but has been narrower than the coalitions for healthcare or retirement reform, and the path to broader political support requires its own thinking.

This is also not a finished proposal. It is a statement that the platform considers universal childcare access to be infrastructure that an honest reform agenda must address. The analytical work remains to be done.

“When parents cannot work because care is unaffordable, the entire economy pays the cost. We have chosen to pay it through reduced workforce participation, lower wages for women, and worse outcomes for children. The question is whether we would prefer to pay for it directly and produce better outcomes.”

For full substantiation, see the universal childcare Model in folder 04. Cost framework: $10/day per child target (Quebec model adapted), 0.8% employer / 0.5% employee payroll funding.

Adjacent Pillar: Universal Mental Health Access

Approximately twenty-three percent of American adults experience a mental health condition in any given year. Approximately half of those people receive no treatment, primarily because of cost, access barriers, or stigma. The consequences include preventable suffering, reduced workforce productivity, increased rates of self-harm, and downstream impacts on physical health, family stability, and community wellbeing. Mental health has been treated as a secondary concern in American health policy for most of the past century. The cost of that neglect is visible everywhere if we choose to see it.

The Underlying Principle

Mental health is health. The historical separation of mental health from medical care reflects an older understanding that has been progressively contradicted by every advance in the underlying science. Mental illness has biological, psychological, and social dimensions that interact in ways that make purely medical or purely psychological frames inadequate, but the policy implication is straightforward: a healthcare system that does not address mental health is not actually a complete healthcare system.

The platform considers Universal Mental Health access to be a component of universal healthcare access, ideally implemented as part of a coherent reform of the broader healthcare system rather than as a separate program. This document treats it as an adjacent pillar in its own right because the specific mechanisms for delivering mental health care, the workforce constraints, and the institutional questions are distinct enough that they merit separate treatment.

What an American Version Might Look Like

The approach that fits most naturally with the platform’s values is universal voluntary access funded as public infrastructure. Every American can see a therapist or psychiatrist at no cost to themselves at the point of service, with funding through the same mechanism as universal healthcare access. The barrier to access becomes zero. The choice to access remains the individual’s. Most of the public health benefit comes from removing barriers to people who already want care, not from compelling participation by people who do not.

Integrated screening through existing healthcare touchpoints captures most of the early-detection benefit without creating a separate mandatory infrastructure. Annual physical exams, school physicals, prenatal visits, and similar routine healthcare contacts already happen for most Americans and could include validated mental health screening tools that flag concerns for follow-up care. This is closer to current best practice in primary care than to the mandatory annual psychiatric evaluation that an earlier framing of this idea proposed.

Workforce development is a parallel and necessary investment. The United States currently has approximately twenty-eight thousand practicing psychiatrists for a population of three hundred and thirty million. Even at current levels of mental health utilization, the workforce is insufficient. Universal access without workforce expansion produces longer waiting lists rather than better care. A serious mental health platform plank includes substantial public investment in training the next generation of mental health professionals — psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, licensed counselors, and peer support specialists — over a multi-decade horizon.

On the Connection to Violence Prevention

An earlier framing of this idea connected Universal Mental Health screening to violence prevention. The platform takes this concern seriously while recognizing that the empirical relationship is more complicated than public discussion often acknowledges. The vast majority of mental illness does not produce violence. People with serious mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. The strongest predictors of mass violence are not reliably detectable through standard psychiatric evaluation.

This does not mean mental health policy is unrelated to violence prevention. It does mean that the relationship runs primarily through the broader benefits of a society where people in crisis can access help, where social isolation is reduced, and where the underlying conditions that produce desperate acts are addressed in their own terms. Universal voluntary access produces these benefits. Mandatory screening tied to public safety produces a different set of effects, including stigmatization of people with mental illness who pose no threat, over-flagging by clinicians worried about liability, and disproportionate impact on marginalized communities.

The platform therefore frames Universal Mental Health access as worth pursuing on its own merits rather than as a violence prevention strategy. This is the analytically defensible position and is consistent with the broader principle that policy proposals should be defended on grounds the evidence supports.

What Has Not Been Worked Out

The funding mechanism design is incomplete, sharing this gap with the healthcare and childcare adjacent pillars. The workforce capacity analysis to determine the scale of training investment required is incomplete. The empirical analysis of current mental health utilization patterns and unmet need has not been performed at the level of rigor applied to the wage floor analysis. The integration with existing public mental health programs (community mental health centers, Medicaid mental health coverage, Veterans Affairs mental health services) requires explicit design work.

This is also not a finished proposal. It captures the values commitment and the architectural intuition. The analytical work remains.

“The strongest case for Universal Mental Health access is its own case: less suffering, better lives, stronger communities. That is sufficient.”

For full substantiation, see 05_Universal_Mental_Health_Access_Substantiation.docx and the Universal Mental Health Model in folder 04. Cost framework: voluntary access structure, 0.5% employer / 0.3% employee payroll funding.

How These Adjacent Pillars Fit With the Primary Pillars

The three adjacent pillars share architectural DNA with the three primary pillars but differ in important ways that justify their separate treatment.

Shared architecture: All six pillars rest on pooled contribution, empirical grounding where possible, and transparency by design. Each treats some aspect of national life as collective infrastructure rather than as a market-allocated service. Each addresses a problem where the current structure produces visibly worse outcomes than peer nations.

Different funding mechanisms: The three primary pillars share a single funding engine, the Sovereign Fund, which is appropriate for long-horizon compound-growth applications. The three adjacent pillars are current-consumption programs (healthcare, childcare, mental health) that require dedicated funding mechanisms more similar to existing payroll contribution programs than to investment funds. The Sovereign Fund cannot fund all six.

Different analytical maturity: The primary pillars have been worked out to the level of integrated cash flow models, sensitivity analysis, and explicit limitations documentation. The adjacent pillars are at the level of carefully framed concepts. The next analytical work for the platform is to bring the adjacent pillars to the same level of maturity.

Different political profiles: Each adjacent pillar has its own coalition history, its own opposition history, and its own political economy. Healthcare reform has been attempted repeatedly and has produced both successes (Medicare, the Affordable Care Act) and failures (Clinton 1993, single-payer initiatives in Vermont and California). Universal childcare has not been seriously attempted at the federal level since the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971. Universal mental health access has never been attempted as such, though parity legislation has progressed incrementally. Each requires its own political strategy.

“Six pillars is a complete picture of what the platform is reaching toward. Three pillars is what the platform can currently defend at the level of rigorous analysis. The honest distance between those two numbers is what this companion document exists to capture.”

Path Forward

The platform document and this companion document together describe the full vision: three pillars built, three pillars in development. The next phase of analytical work is to bring the adjacent pillars to the same level of rigor as the primary pillars.

That work involves funding mechanism design for each adjacent pillar, empirical analysis of current outcomes and unmet need using existing federal data, institutional design for the agencies and programs that would implement each pillar, comparison to international precedents, and explicit acknowledgment of limitations and open questions. The body of work produced by the primary pillars (the white paper, the Excel models, the empirical wage floor analysis, the education fund model) is the template for what each adjacent pillar requires.

This document will be revised as that work is completed. Subsequent revisions will reflect specific funding mechanism proposals, specific cost and benefit analyses, and specific institutional design choices. The current version captures the ideas at the level they can currently be defended.

Comments, critique, and collaboration are welcomed. The values that motivate these adjacent pillars are widely shared. The analytical work to translate them into defensible policy is the gap that remains.

Jason Robertson

Ohio, 2026