Medicare for All

This Valentine’s Day, we’re showing some love for moms and other folks who have given birth by talking about one of the most important but least-discussed aspects of our current healthcare system: maternal healthcare. We’ll be sharing your stories about the good, the bad, and the ridiculously expensive, celebrating resilience, and getting fired up to change what it looks like to have a...

Heads up, there’s a lot of swears in this one. Well-justified swears, we think, but if you have younger listeners nearby, you might want to put on your headphones. Just this past week, billionaire Mark Cuban launched a new healthcare service called – because he’s a megalomaniac –  the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company . The company claims to sell prescription drugs at more a...

“Direct contracting” is the latest in a long line of insidious tactics pushing Medicare towards privatization. Today we’re chatting with Dr. Claire Cohen , MD from Physicians for a National Health Program about direct contracting entities: what they are, how they threaten beneficiaries of traditional Medicare, and what is being done to stop them. Show Notes Dr. Claire Cohen is an African Ame...

Today we’re celebrating a win! We’re talking to organizers and leaders at National Nurses United (NNU),who recently ran a very impactful campaign to get Representative John Garamendi from California to commit to being a co-sponsor for the Medicare for All bill in Congress. Representative Garamendi supported previous versions of Medicare for All legislation, but had not signed on since Representati...

This week, we’re teaming up with the Poverty Policy Podcast and the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council for a crossover episode! We discuss the Build Back Better bill and weigh its potential impact on individuals experiencing poverty and houselessness. Show Notes The National Health Care for the Homeless Council is a membership organization uniting thousands of health care professionals,...

This week we’re doing a “deep” dive into “deep canvassing,” a much-hyped, relatively new organizing tactic that focuses on engaging voters in empathetic conversations. Promising studies have shown that deep canvassing can be effective in reducing prejudice against marginalized groups and changing voter’s minds, even on hotly contested issues like immigration or transgender rights. But just h...

We answer your questions about why we don’t have Medicare for All yet, interfacing with groups fighting for incremental reforms like Medicaid expansion, and more. Show Notes Starting with an easy one, many people asked: Why don’t we have Medicare for All yet? A few reasons: first, our political system is very different from most of the other countries that already have single payer. In the U.S. to...

Today we discuss the sorry state of mental healthcare in the United States, and the impact Medicare for All would have for people who need it. Our guests today are Dr. Beverly Smith, President of the American Mental Health Counselors Association and Guila Todd, Government Affairs Manager at the American Counselor Association . Show Notes The mental healthcare situation is especially dismal for the...

The American Dental Association (ADA) – the largest association of dental professionals in the country – are fighting against the proposal to add dental benefits to Medicare. We talk about the politics of ADA opposition to healthcare, and also hear from seniors themselves about what it’s like to go without needed dental care. Dental care is not part of health insurance for most A...

Are the German and Dutch health insurance systems really private? What would it actually take to transition to a social insurance model? Once and for all, we debunk the myth that we can “build on the current public-private healthcare system” to achieve universal coverage.  Show Notes Ben and Stephanie discuss Healthcare-NOW’s recently-completed comprehensive comparison of pu...

With the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine receiving full approval from the FDA, and Moderna shortly behind, prepare for an unprecedented wave of drug advertising! This could have a positive impact with regards to vaccination rates, but drug advertising in the U.S. has a dark, deadly history. Joined by guest co-host Gillian Mason, we cover the surprising reasons our airwaves and social media are saturated w...

United Healthcare, the largest insurer in the US, announced this May that they may start denying claims from the ER if it turned out the visits were not actual emergencies. Like almost everything in our healthcare system, this policy doesn’t actually make sense on a moral or even a financial level. We discuss the surprisingly long history of this “new” policy, its implications and impact, and the...

Last podcast, we discussed expanding and improving Medicare, and since then there are a couple of major updates on the budget moving through Congress, with implications for the M4A movement! We also discuss the history of expanding and improving Medicare (or degrading, in the case of privatization). Show Notes Last podcast, we discussed expanding and improving Medicare – way back 2 weeks ago...

Congress has an opportunity to make real steps towards Medicare for All this week. We go over the 4 proposed reforms that would expand Medicare, what’s at play and what’s at stake, the opposition to Medicare Expansion – if you can believe it – there IS opposition to giving seniors dental care – and what you can do to help pressure our legislators to fight! Show Notes Ben in Bosto...

We’re joined by L.A. Kauffman, author of How to Read a Protest: the Art of Organizing and Resistance . L.A. Kauffman was the mobilizing coordinator for some of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history — the massive Iraq antiwar protests of 2003 and 2004 — and has played key roles in many other movements and campaigns. Her book is about the role of marches and rallies in social m...

Stephanie and Ben discuss who developed the vaccine; who is profiting from it; and the fight for global vaccine equity on this episode with guests David Mitchell of Patients for Affordable Drugs and Andrew Goldstein , a public hospital primary care doctor, assistant professor of medicine at NYU, activist, and organizer with the Free the Vaccine and People’s Vaccine campaigns. Show Notes Who...

62% of people now have a positive opinion of drug companies, up from 32% in 2020. What’s responsible for the sudden shift, and do pharmaceutical companies deserve this newfound adoration? We’re joined by Shannon Rotolo , co-founder of Pharmacists for Single Payer and a clinical pharmacy specialist at the University of Chicago Medicine, to debunk industry lies about research and develop...

In our inaugural mailbag episode, Rose Roach – Executive Director of the Minnesota Nurses – joins us to answer your questions about how Medicare for All would save money and impact rural hospitals, how to answer to pushback on cost, talking to conservatives about Medicare for All, the political landscape, petitions as a base-building tool, and more! Show Notes Ben and Stephanie are joi...

We discuss Biden’s American Families Plan proposal , which Biden unveiled in his first State of the Union address last week (spoiler: it’s rather underwhelming) and the industry lobbying that made it happen. Then we discuss the proposal to expand Medicare that came from Reps and Senators – both progressives and moderates – and what it may signify in the fight for Medicare for All. Show...

We talk with Ben Palmquist from Partners for Dignity & Rights about a new anti-single payer bill in the Florida state legislature that would require a two-thirds supermajority to pass a single payer bill in the state . We segue into a larger conversation about the various opposition groups that have sprung up against Medicare for All and how the Florida bill is part of a trend of attacks on bo...

In January, the Campaign for New York Health made single payer history in the United States: the bill secured the support of a majority of co-sponsors in both chambers of the New York State legislature. Campaign organizers Ursula Rozum and YuLing Koh Hsu join us to discuss how NY got here and the very real chance to win Medicare for all at the state level! Show Notes The Campaign for New York Heal...

Rep. Pramila Jayapal re-introduced the Medicare for All bill last week with a record 112 original cosponsors – up now to 114. We talk about surprise sign-ons, powerful stories from the cosponsoring Reps, the first national endorsement of a hospital CEO, and the epic organizing effort that got us to this stage! Show Notes Representative Pramila Jayapal introduced H.R.1976 on March 17th, with...

We’re joined by Stephanie Kang, Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Health Policy Director, to discuss the upcoming 2021 Medicare for All bill, which will be shortly reintroduced in Congress. Kang also discusses changes made to the membership rules of the Progressive Caucus, and the most effective way to lobby your legislator during COVID! Show Notes We are excited to speak with Stephanie Kang, DrPH, MS, the H...

In the House, we have about half of the cosponsors we need to pass Medicare for All. Democrats who are not currently cosponsors (and constitute the other half we need to win) represent districts that are whiter and wealthier than the districts we’ve already won. What does this mean for our movement and how do we organize in this next phase? Show Notes Ben and Stephanie provide an update on the Med...

Is the supposedly “private” Netherlands healthcare system a model for the US? And what would it take, politically and in terms of concrete policy, to transition to this system? Dr. Kieke Okma , an expert on healthcare systems around the world, joins us to discuss how exactly the Dutch healthcare system works (to start: its 80% publicly financed), the nature and extent of the privatization re...