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Medicare for all

Medicare For All Means Real Choice

July 7, 2019 Bonnie Castillo, Commondreams. , , ,
A new survey out this week is an important step forward to demolishing one of the principle talking points against Medicare for All. No doubt, you've heard this one: "People love their insurance! Under Medicare for All, you'll lose your private insurance and your doctor." Uh, no. A Morning Consult/Politico survey conducted after the first Democratic presidential primary debates found that when people hear the real story—that under Medicare for All you can keep your preferred doctors and hospitals, support climbs to a clear majority of 55 percent. Support among Democrats gets to 78 percent. For independents it's a big leap of 14 points, up to 56 percent support.

WaPo Doesn’t Want Voters To Know Medicare For All Will Cut Their Health Costs

June 27, 2019 Julie Hollar, Fair.org , ,
Healthcare consistently ranks as one of the top issues for Democratic voters, so helping those voters understand Democratic presidential candidates’ positions on healthcare ought to be a key job for journalists. Right? A recent survey of those voters shows that they are woefully confused and misinformed, and a recent Washington Post story on the issue perfectly illustrated why that’s the case. The Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy think tank, polled people on their knowledge and opinions about Medicare for All and other healthcare reform ideas, and found all sorts of mistaken beliefs...

Ways And Means Committee Chair Doesn’t Want Medicare-For-All Hearing To Mention “Medicare For All”

June 12, 2019 Ryan Grim and Akela Lacy, Theintercept.com ,
IN PREPARATION FOR Wednesday’s hearing on Medicare for All before the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the panel’s chair met privately with Democrats to lay out how he wants it to unfold. Rep. Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been in office since 1989, told the Democrats on the panel that he didn’t want the phrase “Medicare for All” to be used. Instead, he said, the hearing should focus on all the different ways to achieve “universal health care” or “universal health coverage,” which he said was a better term to deploy.

At AMA’s Annual Meeting, Doctors And Nurses Demand ‘Get Out of the Way’ Of Medicare For All

June 9, 2019 By Julia Conley, Common Dreams , ,
Nurses, doctors, and medical students on Saturday afternoon gathered outside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Chicago, where the largest professional association for physicians was holding their annual meeting, to demand that the group "do no harm" and stop standing in the way of real, meaningful healthcare reform. National Nurses United (NNU), Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) and Health Over Profit for Everyone (www.HealthOverProfit.org) were among the groups that gathered to call on the American Medical Association (AMA) to support a Medicare for All program, which would replace the for-profit health insurance industry with government-funded healthcare for everyone in the United States.

The Hospital Under Medicare For All

May 14, 2019 Adam Gaffney, Jacobinmag.com , ,
More than 24 million people require hospitalization annually in the United States, and many more see their doctors or other providers, or have tests and procedures, in these institutions. Yet as the health care reform debate heats up, some have painted a grim picture of how hospitals would fare under Medicare for All — predicting slashed budgets, shuttered wards, service cuts, and mass layoffs. Especially for those who rely on hospital care, such claims may sound an alarm. A recent commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association predicted that Medicare for All would put hospitals deep in the red, forcing them to shed up to 1.5 million jobs.

New CBO Report On Medicare For All, A Serious And Positive Contribution

May 5, 2019 Robert Pollin, Common Dreams , ,
The Congressional Budget Office issued a report on May 1, 2019 titled "Key Design Components and Considerations for Establishing a Single-Payer Health Care System." This report reviews a range of considerations as regards the design and implementation of a single- payer system as applied to the United States. The CBO report, as with all such analyses, needs to address two fundamental issues with respect to the establishment of a single-payer system for the U.S. These are: 1) Is a single-payer system capable of providing good-quality care to all U.S. residents; and 2) Is a single-payer system capable of significantly reducing overall U.S. health care costs while still delivering universal good-quality care? The report does not provide explicit answers, yes or no, to these questions. But it does present a framework for understanding how the U.S. could, in fact, establish a successful single-payer system.

We Desperately Need Medicare for All. These 10 Statistics Prove It.

May 4, 2019 By Staff, In These Times   , ,
Here’s a reminder of the disastrous state of American healthcare. It was a big week for Medicare for All. The House Rules Committee held its first-ever congressional hearing to discuss U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal's (D-Wash.) Medicare for All Act of 2019, and the Congressional Budget Office will release a report addressing many of the key questions about single-payer healthcare. This discussion couldn't come soon enough. Here's a statistical snapshot of the gravity of America's current healthcare crisis.

Single-Payer Advocate Ady Barkan Shines At Historic ‘Medicare For All’ Hearing

May 2, 2019 Matt Fuller and Jeffrey Young, Huffpost.com , , ,
Above Photo: GABRIEL OLSEN VIA GETTY IMAGES. Ady Barkan (center) attends the Los Angeles Supports a Dream Act Now! protest  with actress

Insurance Industry Whistleblower Gives Glimpse Of Effort To Crush Medicare For All

April 14, 2019 Jake Johnson, Commondreams. , ,
In an effort to inform the public about the corporate forces working to crush Medicare for All, an employee at the insurance giant UnitedHealthcare leaked a video of his boss bragging about the company's campaign to preserve America's for-profit healthcare system. "I felt Americans needed to know exactly who it is that's fighting against the idea that healthcare is a right, not a privilege," the anonymous whistleblower told the Washington Post's Jeff Stein. During an employee town hall in February, Stein reported on Friday, UnitedHealthcare CEO Steve Nelson boasted about how much his company is doing to undermine Medicare for All, which is rapidly gaining support in Congress.

WaPo’s ‘Hard-Line’ Stance Against Medicare For All

March 23, 2019 Michael Corcoran, FAIR.org. , ,
The phrase “hard-line,” as commonly used in the Washington Post, is almost always a pejorative. Often it references official enemy states like Iran (5/4/18, 5/9/18) or North Korea (1/18/19). In a recent Post(3/11/19) article, however, reporter Paige W. Cunningham used the term to refer to a different kind of enemy: proponents of Medicare for All. Among the “hard-line liberal groups and unions” the article refers to in its headline and lead is the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities, a coalition of approximately 100 national disability organizations.

Pharma & Insurance Gave $43M To 130 House Democrats Not Backing Medicare For All

March 10, 2019 By Carl Gibson, Grit Post , ,
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) recently rolled out House Democrats’ version of a Medicare for All proposal that would ensure all Americans have guaranteed healthcare. The bill (H.R. 1384) has an impressive 106 co-sponsors, and has been called “the most ambitious Medicare-for-All plan yet” by Vox, which also reported the benefits the House bill contained were even more significant than the companion bill Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) first introduced in his chamber. Grit Post calculated that donors in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries gave a combined $43,740,947 in career campaign donations to the 130 House Democrats who have not yet signed on as co-sponsors to Rep. Jayapal’s bill.

The Movement And The 2020 Elections

February 18, 2019 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance , , , , , ,
The political system in the United States is a plutocracy, one that works for the benefit of the wealthy, not the people. Although we face growing crises on multiple fronts - economic insecurity, a violent and racist state, environmental devastation, never-ending wars and more - neither of the Wall Street-funded political parties are taking action to provide relief. Instead, they are helping the rich to get richer. The wealth divide has gotten so severe that three people have more wealth than the bottom 50% of people in the country. Without the support of the rich, it is nearly impossible to compete in elections.

Urge Congresswoman Jayapal To Strengthen Health Bill

January 30, 2019 Health Over Profit for Everyone, HealthOverProfit.org. , , ,
On Tuesday, January 29, 2019, more than 500 single payer supporters, both individuals and organizations, sent a letter to Congresswoman Jayapal urging her to make three improvements to the health bill she plans to introduce within the next two weeks.  Although the signers have not seen the actual text of the legislation, conversations with the few people who have and with Congressional staff indicate that there are at least three serious flaws. One is the inclusion of for-profit health facilities in the system. The second is an unnecessarily long transition period which excludes those ages 20 to 54, 47% of the population, for two years. And the third is a failure to explicitly include immigrants in the national system.

The Problem With Institutional Provider Profit In A Medicare For All System

January 10, 2019 Lambert Strether, Nakedcapitalism.com , ,
I’ve avoided writing about hospitals and other institutions, because my focus has always been on the patient, and whether they get, or don’t get, health care under our horrid mixed system of Medicaid, private insurance, and Medicare (subject to a neoliberal infestation though it may be). However, as Medicare for All approaches the reality of House hearings and alternatives emerge to HR676 and S1804, the two bills now on the table, a greater focus on institutions beyond the health insurance industry becomes inescapable. One key difference between health care institutions is whether they are profit or non-profit...

Differentiating Real Medicare-for-All From Sham Knockoffs

December 25, 2018 Don McCanne, PNHP , ,
Sarah Kliff and Dylan Scott in Vox help to clarify the differences in the legislative proposals that have inappropriately been grouped together as “Medicare-for-All” proposals. That’s important since only two are bona fide Single Payer Medicare for All bills (Jayapal and Sanders), and the others are lesser bills that leave most of the current dysfunctional financing system in place while offering not much more than an additional public option.
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