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Single payer health care

On Medicare’s 54th Birthday, Another Year Closer To Winning Medicare For All

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare Act. Within a year, and without the aid of computers, the United States provided more than 19 million seniors with health coverage. Before the law existed, over half of the elderly in the United States did not have health insurance. Medicare, which now includes people with disabilities, celebrated its 54th birthday this week. Today, the US is on the verge of another transformation. Thirty million people do not have health insurance and 30,000 people die annually because of that sad fact. The healthcare crisis is also demonstrated by the separate but unequal reality that wealthy people in the US live 15 years longer than poor people. Momentum for National Improved Medicare for All is growing.

Medicare For All In The Democratic Party: Corporate Money vs. The People

The US House of Representatives this week showed it is standing with the political consensus in the Democratic Party. Now, a majority of the House Democrats has signed on to the HR 1384, the Medicare for All Act of 2019. A political consensus has developed in the Democratic Party among its voters, but its leadership continues to try to please those who profit from the current wasteful and expensive insurance-based system that does not meet the needs of people in the United States. Sen. Kamala Harris, who put forward an unacceptable so-called Medicare for all plan, has been trying to hide her donations from the industry. The Intercept exposed how her campaign is receiving funding from pharmaceutical executives while saying it is not taking such funds.

How Big Strike 30 Years Ago Aided Fight For Single Payer

Thirty years ago this summer, 60,000 telephone workers walked off the job in New York and New England — and stayed out for seventeen weeks. Their struggle against NYNEX, a telecom giant, became one of labor’s few big strike victories, during a decade that began with the disastrous defeat of PATCO, the national air traffic controllers union. Within the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the model of membership mobilization and workplace militancy developed in 1989 has been used, to varying degrees, in every regional contract campaign they’ve conducted since then.

Medicare For All Means Real Choice

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.

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

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.

A Preview Of The Bloody Uphill Battle For Single-Payer

Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Tammy Baldwin introduced a bill today that would allow people over the age of 50 to buy into Medicare. It’s a very limited gesture toward expanding healthcare, one that would do nothing for millions of people who are currently without healthcare or unable to afford their insurance, co-pays, or deductibles. The bill doesn’t say what premiums would be. Of all the Medicare buy-in or public option plans, this kind—the kind that expands care by expanding the eligibility age—is arguably the most laughable, since it doesn’t even try to help people under 50. Still, it is something, in that it is literally not nothing.

The Billionaires Are Wrong; We Can’t Afford Anything But Single Payer Health Care

The three billionaires who are running for president put out false information on improved Medicare for all. This includes Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg,  and Howard Schultz.  Bloomberg and Schultz need immediate attention because in the last few days they have been putting out the false claim that the US cannot afford Medicare for all when the facts are it will save trillions of dollars over the next decade compared to the current expensive and wasteful system. What we cannot afford is the current system.

Urge Congresswoman Jayapal To Strengthen Health Bill

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.

Single Payer Gold Standard HR 676 Rest In Peace

The House Democrats have decided that their single payer Medicare for All bill will not carry the HR 676 number. They let that number go this week to a bill that reiterates “the support of the Congress of the United States for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).” Some in the single payer movement see the abandonment of HR 676 as a betrayal of years of grassroots activism, activism that drew 124 co-sponsors to HR 676 in the House last year. Now, with Democrats in charge of the House, the Medicare for All single payer bill is being rewritten, watered down and renumbered.

Healthcare Impacts Everyone. Demand Transparency In Medicare For All

One of the most important pieces of legislation of our times, one that will impact every person in the United States, is currently being drafted in a non-transparent and non-participatory process by a small group of insiders. Single payer activists are calling on Jayapal to share the content of her draft so the extensive expertise of the single payer movement can advise her. On Monday, December 17, 2018, the Health Over Profit for Everyone campaign delivered a letter to Congresswoman Jayapal requesting her to share a draft text of HR 676 with the single payer movement for review and input.

Differentiating Real Medicare-for-All From Sham Knockoffs

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.

Advocates Call On Jayapal To Release Draft Text Of House Single Payer Bill

Single payer advocates are calling on Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) to share the draft text of HR 676 with the single payer movement for review and input. Jayapal is the new lead sponsor of HR 676, which for the past fifteen years was sponsored by former Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan). “Some of your public statements recently have caused concern,” the single payer advocates wrote in a letter to Jayapal. “In particular, statements about your desire to align the text with the Senate bill, S 1804, which is inferior to HR 676.

Stop Medicare Privatization

As the movement for National Improved Medicare for All grows, we need to make sure that Medicare Advantage, which is just a front for the private insurance industry, is not allowed to be part of a single payer health system. Medicare Advantage costs the healthcare system more money as it feeds profits of private insurance and it provides worse coverage for seniors. We need to rid the system of the insurance industry and that means rid the system of Medicare Advantage.

Hospital Refuses Procedure, Prescribes ‘Fundraising Effort’ For Heart Transplant

Shortly before Thanksgiving, the Spectrum Health Richard Devos Heart and Lung Transplant Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, got back to Hedda Martin to say that she could not have a heart transplant, because she doesn’t have enough money to pay for the immunosuppressant drugs she would need to make sure her body accepts the new heart. The hospital recommended that she should set up a “fundraising effort.”

Build Labor Power: Take Healthcare Off The Bargaining Table

When we bargain for healthcare, we bargain against ourselves. This crisis has created vast insecurity among working-class Americans.  Workers rank health care as the most critical issue in the United States with 60% reporting that maintaining their health insurance is extremely important. Employers know that workers will sacrifice almost anything to hold on to their coverage. And the loss of health insurance during a strike or lockout becomes a horrible weapon in the bosses' arsenal. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that wage increases are often offset by increased healthcare contributions.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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