Medicare for all

On Contact: Covid-19 And America’s Health Care Crisis

November 22, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report COVID-19, Health Care, Joe Biden, Medicare for all

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Dr. Margaret Flowers about the Covid-19 pandemic and the catastrophic response to the public health crisis under America's for-profit healthcare system. Without national coordination, or universal and free national health care, Americans are faced with uneven or absent care due to hospital closures, reductions in hospital beds and services. Lawmakers and hospital administrators compete to purchase basic supplies leading manufacturers to hike prices.

Biden Could Enact Medicare For All By Executive Action

November 22, 2020 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. Educate! Executive Order, Joe Biden, Medicare for all, Pandemic

Journalist David Dayen presented a convincing case Tuesday that President-elect Joe Biden, once sworn into office come January, would have the legal authority to immediately provide complete Medicare coverage to everyone in the country via executive action due to the Covid-19 pandemic—though the very serious question remains: would he? During the primary season in March, Biden said he would veto a Medicare for All bill should one ever reach his desk, but with the coronavirus infection rate surging—and some scenarios projecting an overall death toll as high as 360,000 by the time the inauguration takes place...

Beyond COVID-19: The Power Struggle Over Alternatives For Health Care Reform

November 20, 2020 John Geyman, Counterpunch. Educate! ACA, Health Care, Medicare for all, Public option

Today we face the COVID-19 pandemic, with its resultant economic downturn and systemic racism—the triple crises that have exposed the serious problems of U. S. health care. It is now obvious to most observers that the system is broken, raising the question of how it can be put together through the political process after a hotly contested election season filled with disinformation and confusion about potential reform alternatives. Corporatization, privatization, a shift from not-for-profit to for-profit health care, and the growth of investor-owned corporate health care have been dominant themes in the transformation of U. S. health care since the 1980s.

Supreme Court Challenge To ACA Highlights Why We Need Medicare For All

November 12, 2020 Margaret Flowers, Truthout. Educate! ACA, Health Care, Medicare for all, US Supreme Court

Once again, the fate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the health law passed under the Obama administration in 2010, will be in the hands of the Supreme Court. The court heard oral arguments in the case, California v. Texas, on Tuesday. A decision is expected in the spring. This is the third time the law has been tested in the Supreme Court, but this time experts are not certain the outcome will be as favorable as it was in 2012 and 2015 due to the loss of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her replacement with Amy Coney Barrett.

Racism And Health Toolkit

November 8, 2020 Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. Educate!, Slider health, Health Care, Medicare for all, Racism

Here are the materials you need to give a presentation to your organization or group on racism and health and why we need a national improved Medicare for all healthcare system. This is meant to inform and stimulate discussion about this topic.

Could Your Medical Bills Make You Sick?

October 1, 2020 Lisa L. Gill, Consumer Reports. Educate! Debt, health, Health Care, Medicare for all

Devin Barrington-Ward was doubled over with stomach pain. His chest hurt, too. Though his family urged him to call an ambulance and he was terrified that his condition was serious, Barrington-Ward had another concern on his mind: the expense. Uninsured, he knew he couldn’t afford the ambulance ride. So his mother raced him to a hospital near his home in suburban Atlanta that day in January earlier this year. After several hours in the emergency room, where he saw numerous physicians and got a CT scan and other tests, Barrington-Ward was diagnosed with colitis.

Tens Of Millions More Expected To Lose Employer-Based Insurance

September 29, 2020 Julia Conley, Commondreams. Educate! Health Care, Health Insurance, Medicare for all, Unemployment

While for-profit health insurers have reported record-high earnings this year amid the coronavirus pandemic, small companies across the U.S. are reporting difficulty paying premiums for their employees—and tens of millions of workers are expected to lose their employer-based health insurance by the end of the year, even if they keep their jobs. The New York Times reported on Monday that although some small businesses were able to use funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to cover their employees' health benefits, nearly a third of employers reported to Harvard Business School researchers...

New Report: Private Health Insurers Overpay Hospitals

September 19, 2020 the Rand Corporation. Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Medicare for all, Privatization

Prices paid to hospitals nationally during 2018 by privately insured patients averaged 247% of what Medicare would have paid, with wide variation in prices among states, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Some states (Arkansas, Michigan, and Rhode Island) had relative prices under 200% of Medicare, while other states (Florida, Tennessee, Alaska, West Virginia, and South Carolina) had relative prices that were above 325% of Medicare. The study notes a steady increase in hospital prices, rising to the 2018 average level from an average of 224% of Medicare costs in 2016 and 230% of Medicare costs in 2017.

Medicare For All Is A Beginning, Not The End Point

August 31, 2020 Don Fitz, Green Social Thought. Create! COVID-19, Cuba, Health Care, Medicare for all

As a coup de grâce to the Bernie Sanders campaign Joe Biden declared that he would veto Medicare-for-All. This could drive a dedicated health care advocate to relentlessly pursue Med-4-All as a final goal. However, it is not the final goal. It should be the first step in a complete transformation of medicine which includes combining community medicine with natural medicine and health-care-for-the-world. Contrasting Cuban changes in medicine during the last 60 years with the US non-system of medical care gives a clear picture of why changes must be all-encompassing.

Supreme Court Just Made The Case For Medicare For All

July 31, 2020 Sophia Paslaski, Otherwords. Create! Birth control, Health Care, Medicare for all, US Supreme Court

This July, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that President Trump, who does not have a uterus, was quite right to object to Obama-era rules under the Affordable Care Act that allowed Americans who do have uteri access to free birth control through their employer-provided health insurance plans. Specifically, NPR reports, the Supreme Court upheld a Trump administration rule that “would give broad exemptions from the birth control mandate to nonprofits and some for-profit companies that object to birth control on religious or moral grounds.”

Two-Week Strike By Illinois Nurses In Danger

July 19, 2020 By Benjamin Mateus and Jerry White, WSWS. Resist! Health Care, Labor Union, Medicare for all, Nurses, Strike

Joliet, IL - The two-week strike by 720 nurses at the AMITA St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Joliet, Illinois is at a critical juncture. The nurses, who walked out on July 4, are demanding improvements that are necessary for all health care workers, particularly in the midst of the pandemic: safer patient-to-nurse ratios, improved wages and protection against management retaliation. However, the Illinois Nurses Association (INA), the state AFL-CIO and major unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have forced the nurses to fight one of the largest hospital chains in the state alone, even as AMITA brings in out-of-state strikebreakers and threatens striking workers with poverty if they don’t capitulate.

Why Covid-19 Racial Disparities Make The Case For Medicare For All

June 10, 2020 By Dean E. Robinson, The Smirking Chimp. Educate! COVID-19, health, Medicare for all, Racism

The racial disparities of COVID-19 have received much attention. Blacks are dying at a higher rate that is typically more than double the rate of whites. But we need to move beyond naming the problem of fighting for solutions. Medicare for All would go a long way to beginning to address racial disparities in health care in general and for COVID-19 in particular. The obvious and immediate need of black and other working-class populations caught in the teeth of the pandemic is the right to health care treatment without the burden of cost. Even before the pandemic, lower-income, Latino, and younger workers were more likely to be uninsured. Undocumented workers had the highest rates of uninsurance. The pronounced differences in COVID-19 mortality are not driven by a lack of health care per se but a reflection of how the virus compounds health problems created by inequality.

Scheer Intelligence: Does Medicare For All Await Us At The End Of This Viral Massacre?

May 8, 2020 Robert Scheer, Popular Resistance. Educate! Capitalism, COVID-19, Medicare for all, Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed a number of fatal flaws in the ways the United States operates that all link back to capitalism. Perhaps the most egregious, however, is the country’s inhumane health care system. Given the global spread of Covid-19, it has been possible to witness in real time how other countries have fared against the deadly virus, and for anyone paying attention to health care systems, it has been clear from the onset that the American system, which boasts the highest costs in the world, was going to lead to mass death on a scale unseen in other nations. The combination of obscene health insurance costs, as well as deductibles and copays, and the fact that it is often tied to employment--a problem exacerbated by the rapid rise in unemployment linked to lockdowns across the U.S.--has left many Americans without recourse amid a pandemic in which the overall health of the nation has been determined by those who can’t access health care.

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