Medicare for all

How One Union Uses Kitchen Table Economics To Advance Medicare For All

July 8, 2021 Kari Thompson, Labor Notes. Organize! Education, Health Care, Labor Unions, Medicare for all

Using kitchen table economics is critical for winning workers over to Medicare for All. Before this training, members may be wary of trading something they’re familiar with for something that’s unknown. But in the workshop, they see for themselves that what they have now is robbing them blind—and that Medicare for All would bring them real economic gains. What threads its way through much of our conversation is that the insurance companies are a big part of why we pay so much for health care. For example, a Center for American Progress study shows that more than 8 percent of U.S. health care spending goes to administrative costs. However, the study put out by the Congressional Budget Office last year indicated that administrative costs under a single-payer system would be 1.8 percent or even less.

Liberals And Congress Retreat Rather Than Fight For Medicare For All

July 3, 2021 Ed Grystar, Counterpunch. Strategize! Congress, Health Care, Medicare for all, Single payer health care

At a Bernie Sanders healthcare town hall last year, Rep. Pramila Jayapal glibly stated that the problem to enacting Medicare for All was not more education of the public, but a question of “political will” necessary to actually push it forward. Yet, despite a pandemic, which has laid bare the inequalities and deficiencies of our healthcare system coupled with Democrat majorities in three branches of government, Medicare for All seems off the table. Where is the political will?

Louisville And 20 Other Cities Plan March For Medicare For All, July 24

June 20, 2021 Kay Tillow, KY Healthcare. Organize! Health Care, Medicare for all, Single-Payer

We will begin at 11 AM in the park in front of the Federal Building where we have permission from the city to use the site. We will have speakers (brief) and music then march and/or caravan to Breewayy, the square at 6th between Liberty and Jefferson. There we will place flowers in honor of Breonna Taylor, to connect with her profession as a healer, and to link the struggle for health care with the fight to end systemic racism. We will return to where we began and share refreshments and socialize. We will also be celebrating Medicare’s 56th birthday. We hope you will join with us in demanding that Congress take action by passing a national single payer, improved Medicare for All plan. Such a plan would end the tragic denial of care that causes so much suffering and unnecessary loss of life.

46 Million People In The US Are Not Able To Afford Needed Health Care

April 2, 2021 Jake Johnson, Commondreams. Educate! Democrats, Health Care, Medicare for all

A new study released Wednesday morning shows that nearly 50 million Americans would be unable to afford quality healthcare should the need for treatment suddenly arise, a finding seen as further evidence of the immorality of a for-profit insurance system that grants or denies coverage based on a person's ability to pay. "People can't afford their goddamn healthcare," Tim Faust, a proponent of single-payer healthcare, tweeted in response to the new report. "Families spend less on food so they can make insurance payments. This problem is felt by all, but concentrated among poor people and black people. The American model of health reform—throwing money at private insurers—can not solve it."

How Many More People Have To Die Before We Pass Medicare For All?

March 26, 2021 Phil Ateto, Commondreams. Educate! Health Care, Health Insurance, Medicare for all

I recently joined Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) as they introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2021 in Congress. For me and millions of Americans, this bill’s passage would not only be life-changing—it could be life-saving. In 2010, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer that affects the bone marrow and makes it harder for my body to fight infections. Before I was diagnosed, I was an average 30-something guy who went to the gym and ate right. Today, after 11 years with this disease, I’m still fighting for my life.

Medicare-For-All Is Good For Our Towns

February 27, 2021 Jane Katz Field, Brattleboro Reformer. Create! Congress, Health Care, Medicare for all, Vermont

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 30 million people in the U.S. had no health insurance, and about 50 million were underinsured. The pandemic has caused millions more to lose coverage because of losing their jobs. Indeed the pandemic has given us perspective on an array of injustices in our health care delivery system — including the lack of an adequate public health infrastructure, the racial disparities in access to care, the rationing of care based on ability to pay, and hospitals’ concentration on lucrative cardiac and orthopedic services rather than mental health and primary care. The U.S. spends twice as much per capita on health care as other high-income countries that provide universal coverage, and yet our health outcomes are worse.

Biden’s Health Plan Shifts Even More Public Dollars Into Private Hands

February 20, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Truthout. Educate! ACA, Health Care, Joe Biden, Medicare for all

As the American Rescue Plan (ARP) winds its way through Congress, some progressives are hailing its health provisions as the greatest expansion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 10 years, while conservatives are claiming that it is a slippery slope to a national Medicare for All system. Democrats have decided to forego seeking Republican support for President Biden’s $1.9 trillion promise of relief to those suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic and recession by using the budget reconciliation process. This has Republicans worried the legislation will be used to advance the progressive agenda to expand government health care programs. However, at the end of the day, while the bill may be used to strengthen some provisions in the ACA, it will not move the United States’s health care system any closer to the popular national improved Medicare for All system that we need.

American Healthcare System Failed Black Americans

February 3, 2021 Nick, Progressive Martial Artist. Educate! Black America, health disparities, Medicare for all, Racism

There are certain policy positions that are such a slam dunk that if someone does not support them, I can’t take anything they say seriously, nor can I trust their judgement. Medicare for All is one of those polices. It is the most pro-black legislation in mainstream political discourse right now. Our black leaders, such as Jim Clyburn, teaming up with health insurance companies and Big Pharma, are why the state of healthcare in the African American community is so bleak, as I laid out in my previous article Liberals, for good reason, hold social wedge issues as their primary litmus test. Can you imagine a standard liberal Democrat supporting someone who is openly against gay marriage and abortion rights?

Medicare For All Reaches The Crossroads

February 2, 2021 Shamus Cooke, Counterpunch. Strategize! COVID-19, Health Care, Medicare for all, Single-Payer

In 2021 the U.S. healthcare crisis has, again, reached a boiling point. It was already simmering in 2019 when the number of uninsured grew to 33 million. Covid then triggered a job crisis that added anywhere from 15 to 27 million to the ranks of the uninsured. The still-growing job crisis has pushed the number of uninsured near or beyond the 49 million uninsured that existed prior to Obamacare, whose goal was “universal healthcare.” It’s no surprise then that Medicare For All emerged, pre-Covid, as the most popular policy during the Presidential Democratic primaries. But after the Democratic Party organized, once again, to crush Bernie Sanders’ campaign, Biden tried to push discourse away from Medicare For All with plans to “improve Obamacare” a goal as ambitious as “patching up the Hindenburg.”

Biden Lifts Health Care Plan From Insurance Lobbyists

January 20, 2021 Andrew Perez and Julia Rock, Daily Poster. Educate! health insurance industry, Joe Biden, Medicare for all, Public option

President-elect Joe Biden’s new COVID relief plan does not adopt existing Democratic legislation to expand government sponsored medical coverage nor does it propose a promised public health insurance option. Instead, it adopts proposals from health insurance lobbying groups’ recent letter to lawmakers demanding lucrative new subsidies for insurance companies, at a moment when those corporations have recorded record profits as millions lose coverage and many face claims denials. Biden’s plan would shovel billions of dollars to private health insurers by providing subsidies for Americans to buy coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces, which are far more expensive than government health care programs and have at times been plagued by high rates of claim denials.

Single Payer: Which Way Forward?

January 19, 2021 Ed Grystar, Dissident Voice. Strategize! Health Care, Medicare for all, Single payer health care

To say that there’s a political disconnect in the fight for a national single payer health care delivery system is to state the obvious. The struggle for M4ALL has grown due to decades of grassroots organizing alongside the gradual worsening of Americans’ health insurance coverage, with support now reaching 70% in the general public as reported by FOX News after the November elections. Yet now in the middle of a pandemic, where the USA accounts for a quarter of the world’s infections, and a third of the deaths, the USA’s for-profit healthcare system has no national plan or coordinated response. Instead, since so few Americans are going to the doctor this year, there is resounding joy in the industry as profits mount simultaneously with the despair of millions.

The Obama-fication of ‘The Squad’ Strengthens The Right At The Expense Of The Left

January 16, 2021 Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Democrats, Green New Deal, Medicare for all, The Squad

Black Agenda Report has long understood the Democratic Party to be a graveyard for social movements in the United States. An online push led by Jimmy Dore and the Movement for a People’s Party to #Forcethevote only further confirmed the true function of the Democratic Party. The call was simple. So-called “progressive” Activists pushing #Forcethevote asked “progressive” members of the Democratic Party to withhold their vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House in exchange for a floor vote on Medicare for All. Democrats have grown in number while the Democratic Party’s control of the House has shrunk, thereby making Nancy Pelosi’s path to Speaker of the House more precarious.

Tennessee Capital: Group Demands Racial Equality And Medicare For All

January 14, 2021 Kathleen Serie, FOX17. Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Medicare for all, State Capital, Tennessee

Nashville, TN - A social justice group out of Knoxville, Tennessee made the trek to the State Capitol building on Tuesday, demanding that lawmakers take immediate action on issues like Medicare for all, and the fight for racial equality. This comes on the first day of the legislative session. Earlier Tuesday afternoon when the demonstration was still happening, the rally organizers said their groups wasn't as big as they had hoped it would be, partly because of what happened at the U.S. Capitol last week. But despite their small numbers, they say their message carried big importance. "What's that spell? Black Lives Matter! What's that spell? Black Lives Matter! What's that spell? Black Lives Matter!" demonstrators chanted.

DSA’s Moment Of Truth

January 13, 2021 Shamus Cooke, Counterpunch. Educate! Democratic Socialists of America, Force the Vote, Medicare for all, The Squad

Now that Democrats control the House, Senate, and the Presidency, expectations have been raised around covid relief, rent relief, a Green New Deal, cancelling student debt and Medicare For All. Covid has especially elevated the demand of Medicare For All: the trillion dollar healthcare industry that annually leaves tens of thousands of uninsured dying unnecessary deaths — while bankrupting hundreds of thousands more — has proven a historic failure in the face of the pandemic, while pushing millions more into the realm of the uninsured. The totality of the disaster is similar to a poorer nation in the throes of war or famine.

This Is The Time To Push For National Improved Medicare For All

January 4, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Congress, Force the Vote, Medicare for all, Nancy Pelosi

This past weekend, new members of Congress voted for the speaker of the House. Given the slim majority of Democrats, progressives urged members of Congress who ran on a platform of Medicare for All to negotiate a floor vote for the Medicare for All bill in exchange for their support for Nancy Pelosi. Given the recession, pandemic, the millions who have lost their health insurance, growing support for Medicare for All and this rare opportunity of holding political power, the floor vote was seen as an important demonstration that progressives in Congress would fight for the people's interests this year. The campaign went by the hashtag #ForceTheVote.

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