Medicare for All

This week we chat with Dr. Bita Amani , an epidemiologist and Associate Professor for Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and Lead Co-Chair of the COVID-19 Taskforce on Racism and Equity which is housed in the UCLA Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice, and Health. We talk about how health played a role in the invention of race, and what structural racism in our healthcare...

Public Citizen’s Eagan Kemp joins us as we dive into the history of the individual mandate (spoiler: it’s a conservative idea), why it disproportionately punishes low-income people, and how progressive taxation under a single payer plan would be much more equitable than our current flat premium system. We look back at how such a regressive idea came to be championed by Democrats, and then forward...

This is how intertwined the Medicare for All and public mail movements are: if we had a national single payer system in place for the last decade, the USPS would be running a surplus. Steve DeMatteo of the American Postal Workers Union joins us to discuss the surprising connections between the postal service and our healthcare system, the political and financial obstacles that the USPS has faced u...

This week we host Dr. Monika Dutt, Board member of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and a public health and family physician in Nova Scotia. She fills us in on the historic legal challenge to the Medicare program that was just decided by the Supreme Court of British Columbia . The plaintiff, a for-profit surgery clinic, sought to allow patients to pay more for quicker treatment; it would ha...

Barbara DiPietro is the Senior Director of Policy at the National Health Care for the Homeless Council . She joins us this week to talk about what homelessness looks like in the United States, the wildly disporportionate incidence of COVID-19 in people currently experiencing homelessness, and how the dual crises of rising unemployment and insurance loss are making people more at-risk for becoming...

University of Massachusetts economist Gerald Friedman talks about his recent debate at the Soho Forum with Sally Pipes, a leading figure in the conservative anti-single payer movement. He breaks down the major lines of attack used by the right against Medicare for All, including wait times, horror stories, and free market ideology. Show Notes This week we welcome Professor Gerald (Jerry) Friedman...

Chelsea has had 66 doctor appointments to manage her enduring coronavirus symptoms, which are appearing in almost every system of her body. She discusses the support group that she started to connect people struggling with the physical, mental, logistical, and financial struggles of COVID long haulers. The experience has turned her into a Medicare for All supporter; listen to her reflect on what i...

Mark Dudzic, National Coordinator for the Labor Campaign for Single Payer , joins us again to take a deep dive into the recent history of Medicare for All organizing within the labor movement, including the political calculations made during the failed Clinton health reform push, the changing landscape for unions through the Affordable Care Act , labor’s role in the creation of the center-left Hea...