Single payer health care

How To Make National Improved Medicare For All Inevitable

The national movement for improved Medicare for All is gaining momentum, which means that we have the real potential to win a national universal public health insurance and means that our opponents will double down on preventing this. We speak with Dr. Carol Paris, outgoing president of Physicians for a National Health Program, about how the single payer healthcare movement has changed in the Trump era and where it needs to go. We also cover recent news, including the successful anti-racist actions in DC, the recent verdict against Monsanto and an update on the UPS worker fight for a contract.

Reporting On Medicare For All Makes Media Forget How Math Works

August 5, 2018 Justin Anderson, FAIR Educate! Medicare for all, National Improved Medicare for All, Single payer health care

“Medicare for All,” a federally funded universal healthcare plan championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vermont–Ind.), has quickly become a key issue for progressive voters evaluating Democratic Party candidates for the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential race. The plan would provide coverage for the 40 million currently uninsured in the United States, a gap that is estimated to cause tens of thousands of deaths annually. Despite this, Medicare for All has received no shortage of negative coverage in the media, all revolving around the same question: Just how are we going to pay for it? Medicare for All remedies cost issues through massive administrative cost reductions by cutting out health insurance middlemen and savings from applying Medicare cost rates, which are significantly lower than private insurance rates due to the strength of government bargaining power on costs for care. Of course, it also plans to provide guaranteed coverage to every American.

Happy Birthday Medicare!

July 31, 2018 Mark Dudzic, Labor Campaign for Single Payer Educate! Medicare, National Improved Medicare for All, Single payer health care

On July 30, Medicare turned 53. For over half a century, it has provided healthcare as a right to all Americans over 65 and many disabled Americans. It has saved countless lives and kept millions out of poverty. Together with Social Security, it has been the most popular and successful social program in U.S. history. As we honor their achievement, let us rededicate ourselves to building a diverse grassroots movement, backed by the resources and organizing capacity of America's unions, that is powerful enough to take on the medical industrial complex and establish an expanded and improved Medicare system that covers everyone from the cradle to the grave.

Single-Payer Or Bust

June 16, 2018 Adam Gaffney, Dissentmagazine.org Create! Health Care, Single payer health care

In the 1960s, a struggle took place over the fate of healthcare in Canada. On one side, there were the proponents of the single-payer program called Medicare, like the stubborn Scottish-born socialist Tommy Douglas. Medicare was modeled on a program passed in the province of Saskatchewan in 1961 under Douglas’s leadership, which provided universal coverage of physicians’ services (the province’s 1947 plan for universal hospital coverage had already been federalized in the late 1950s). And on the other side there were those who advocated a more gradual approach, such as Ernest Manning, the premier of Alberta, who went on television in 1965 to ask the nation to “look before we leap.”

The Myth Of Medicare’s Projected Insolvency

June 10, 2018 Don McCanne, PNHP Educate! Medicare, National Improved Medicare for All, Single payer health care

Every year the Medicare trustees project the year in which the funds for Part A of Medicare will be inadequate to pay the full costs for that year, based on anticipated revenue and spending. Each year the media then report the pending insolvency of Medicare. This is nonsense. Although revenues and demographics may change, adjustments are made to keep the program fully funded. Only if Congress were to decide to destroy Medicare would funding be reduced below sustainable levels. This is particularly ironic since this year the Republicans in their budget have already made a statement that we do not have to have adequate revenues to pay our bills - producing a budget with a trillion dollar deficit. Our job is to elect representatives who support Medicare - not just for current beneficiaries but for everyone, in an improved version. The inevitable political support would ensure full funding forever.

How To Spot A Fake Single-Payer Plan

June 8, 2018 Carol Paris, PNHP Educate! National Improved Medicare for All, Single payer health care

Polls show that a majority of Americans (and their doctors) support a Medicare-for-all health system. But instead of pushing for real single payer, many lawmakers and think tanks have proposed watered-down, incremental approaches to health reform. They have confusing names like “Medicare X” or “Medicare Extra for All” that sound almost like the real thing. These plans are promoted as “politically feasible” and “less disruptive” than comprehensive single-payer bills like H.R. 676. Fellow health care advocates often ask me if these plans are worth supporting, since they claim to potentially bring more coverage to more people. I tell them that the differences between “fake” and real single payer are too important to ignore.

Our Healthcare System Is So Broken, Even Non-Profits Are Failing Us

May 21, 2018 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG Radio. Podcast Corporatism, Health Care, Single payer health care

Since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, there has been an unprecedented consolidation in the healthcare industry. Giant medical corporations are investing in "vertical integration," which basically means they own everything, including the hospitals, doctor's practices, long term care centers, pharmacies, insurances (both public and private), and more. This gives corporations the power to have control over hospitals and health professionals. Their interest is a healthy bottom line, not the health of patients and communities.

Poor People’s Campaign Begins With Rallies & Mass Arrests Across The Country

May 14, 2018 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Resist! Poor People's Campaign, Poverty, Single payer health care

The Poor People's Campaign kicked off 40 days of civil resistance calling for a new economy where workers have a wage "commensurate for the 21st-century economy," everyone has healthcare through a single payer system, homelessness is ended and war and militarism no longer dominate the economy. Today's Poor People's Campaign comes 50 years after the campaign Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was doing when he was assassinated. Today's Campaign officially launched on Monday with advocates for economic justice rallying in Washington, D.C. and more than 30 state capitols nationwide. Hundreds were arrested in Washington, DC alone. Rev. William Barber called for a "moral confrontation" stressing that 140 million people live in poverty in the U.S.—one of the world's wealthiest countries—and the abandonment of American workers indicates a profound moral failing of the government. On poverty, he added, "250,000 people are dying every year from poverty and low wealth."

DCCC Takes Money From Insurance Lobbyist As They Oppose Single Payer

May 10, 2018 By Alex Kotch, Tytnetwork.com Educate! Congress, Electoral Politics, health insurance industry, Lobbying, Single payer health care

In April 2017, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) wanted to find out the best way for its candidates to address the topic of health care, so it hired two research firms to conduct internal polling focused on 52 battleground districts expected to be close races in 2018. Stan Greenberg, a pollster and founding partner with Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQR), presented his findings at the offices of the Democratic National Committee and suggested that Democratic candidates should focus on the flaws of Republican plans and offer “Proactive Solutions (only if asked),” as The Intercept reported. While “single-payer” never made it into the proposed talking points compiled in its memo, GQR listed numerous “likely Republican lines of attack” against Democratic House candidates over Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill...

The Health Care Bait-And-Switch

March 12, 2018 Glen Ford, Blackagendareport.com Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Single payer health care

On the campaign trail in January of 2016, Hillary Clinton told Iowa voters that Bernie Sanders’ single payer health care proposal was an idea whose time would never come. "People who have health emergencies can't wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass ," said the presumed shoo-in for president. Two years later, one-third of Democrats in the Senate have endorsed Sanders’ Medicare for All Act and half the Democrats in the U.S. House have signed on to Rep. John Conyers’ Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, HR 676 . Polls show 75 percent of Democrats favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American,” and 31 percent of the public at-large wants health care to be the first problem the Democrats tackled if they win the White House in 2020.

Medicare For All Advocates Rip ‘Cynical And Dishonest’ Healthcare Initiative As Ploy To Undermine Single Payer

February 9, 2018 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org Educate! Health Care, Single payer health care

"The path already exists. The movement already exists. The political will exists. What's lacking is a willingness to stand up for values that people already agree with for fear of alienating people like Bill Frist." Medicare for All advocates on Wednesday denounced a new healthcare initiative introduced by a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, health policy administrators, and healthcare sector CEOs. Critics argue that the non-profit, United States of Care, ignores the majority of Americans who back government-run healthcare for all, instead catering to centrist Democrats in Washington who pledge to "ensure that every single American has access to quality, affordable healthcare" while insisting that a universal healthcare program—like the ones that exist in every other industrialized country in the world—is unfeasible.

Spring 2018 Single Payer Action Camp

February 5, 2018 Margaret Flowers, Health Over Profit. Organize! Health Care, Medicaid, Medicare for all, Single payer health care

Health Over Profit for Everyone, in partnership with the Backbone Campaign, is offering the first Single Payer Action Camp to build participant's skills in strategy, messaging and direct action to win National Improved Medicare for All. The camp will include workshops on tools for developing strategic campaigns, how to make your message visible, creating media, nonviolent direct action and more. We will put those skills to use on Monday and Tuesday through actions in Washington, DC.

Which Path To National Improved Medicare For All?

February 2, 2018 Margaret Flowers, Healthoverprofit.org Strategize! Health Care, Medicare, Single payer health care

Two states with a long history of state-based healthcare reform efforts, California and New York, are hard at work organizing for state bills labeled as single payer healthcare plans. Other states are moving in that direction too. This raises questions by single payer advocates: Can states create single payer healthcare systems? Does state-level work help or hinder our goal of National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA)? The movement for NIMA gained momentum throughout 2017, largely due to rising premiums under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Republican efforts to worsen the healthcare crisis. Supporters of NIMA mobilized to build support for single payer legislation in Congress, spoke out at Town Halls and pressured lawmakers. As a result, the House bill, HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act...

Health Insurance And Pharma Block Hopes For Single-Payer Health Care

February 1, 2018 By Josh Finkelstein, Opensecrets.org Educate! Big Pharma, Health Care, Health Insurance, Single payer health care

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont hosted a town hall recently to discuss the Medicare for All Act, during which he emphasized a conflict of interest around involving the private sector in healthcare. “Right now, we have a healthcare system that is not designed to provide quality care to all people in a cost effective way,” Sanders said at the town hall. “Let us be frank, we have a healthcare system designed to make enormous profits for insurance companies and drug companies. And disease prevention is not very high on their lists.” Sanders isn’t alone in his sentiment. A number of polls last year (see here, here, and here) indicate that a growing plurality of Americans support switching to a single-payer healthcare system, including a substantial majority of Democrats.

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