Medicare for All

Occasional fistfights aside, most of our legislators make the choice to use their words when they’re angry, and a lot of those words go into public letters they write to presidents, officials, and even each other. Despite the fact that no one else in this country has written or read a letter in decades, the public comment letter is still popular with politicians, who have elevated this obscure lit...

Here at the Medicare for All Podcast, we love calling out all the bad actors in our healthcare system – greedy insurance companies, soul-less CEOs in Big Pharma,profit-hungry “non-profit hospitals”, and all our favorite villains. Mostly, we look at the ways those predators target sick people and poor people for exploitation, but today we’re looking at what happens when they start fighting each oth...

Just this Monday, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day, a tribute to one of the great leaders of the movement for racial justice – but something that often gets forgotten in the flurry of MLK quotes that become memes this time of year is that equity in healthcare was a crucial part of King’s vision. Throughout his career in activism, he often stated his conviction that “Of all the forms of inequal...

It’s that time again folks… time for a Mailbag Episode! We reached out to our whole audience and all our supporters to find the pressing questions on everyone’s mind. Or at least we would have if Gillian hadn’t been too busy eating turkey to email our list. So instead, Gillian reached out personally to some of our superfans (anyone in her contact list who had previously admitted to listening to th...

Open enrollment. Deductible. Coinsurance. HMO. Indemnity plan. If you’re listening this far, you probably have a migraine already. Understanding the language of the health insurance industry, let alone selecting a health insurance plan, can be confusing, frustrating, and disheartening. But never fear – we are here to give you a crash course on everything you need to know about your insurance...

If you’ve ever had an experience with the American healthcare system, you’ve probably walked away thinking, “Why can’t we have nice things? Or even basic human things??” We get stuck on gurneys sitting in ER hallways, waiting hours for care; we skip other basic needs like food and housing to pay for the healthcare we can’t skip; or we wait for months for preauthorizations from our health insurance...

Just over a month ago we lost Bob Barker, the man who taught us all about the brutal nature of capitalism one pricing game at a time. Now, thanks to the I nflation Reduction Act, the federal government is going to be playing a role in determining the prices for some of our favorite products . No, we’re not talking about cars or family vacations to the Bahamas – we’re talking about the prescription...

With all the threats facing our country – climate change, a predatory economy, corporations buying our elections, and the overt move towards fascism among the far right – you would think that politicians would be laser-focused on the existential crises descending upon us. But instead, politicians in the US are devoting a considerable amount of their energy these days to an all-out assault on the r...

Almost every patient in America has had a frustrating experience in a hospital setting where we feel like we’re on a medical conveyor belt that moves WAY too slowly. We sit for too long in a waiting room; then our nurses or doctors speak with us very briefly; we might feel more like we’re filling out an online survey than we’re being listened to; then we might have more waiting; and then we’re pus...

Today we bring you behind the scenes into our office at Healthcare NOW. Just like the TV show The Office, we have our hijinks and wacky characters, including some very smart interns! They have prepped some of their burning questions for this episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnG1C8DOZVY First, from Intern Noah from Boston College: In your opinion, what is the most effective way to organize/...

It’s summer, the sun is blazing, and we only have one thing on our minds – the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of the high-octane, expertly paced thriller The Fugitive , originally released August 6, 1993 starring Harrison Ford. Oh, and Medicare for All. We’re always thinking about Medicare for All. Now that we mention it, isn’t it funny how if we had a single-payer healthcare system, The Fug...

As Tom Petty taught us all in the 1980s, Waiting is the Hardest Part. That’s even more true when you’re waiting to see a doctor for a problem that needs attention. Anyone who has ever tried to secure a doctor’s appointment in this country knows that a) it’s going to be harder than scoring Taylor Swift tickets and b) you are going to face serious delays before you get your care. In this episode, we...

Usually we spend our time on this podcast talking about our for-profit healthcare system and why we need to make healthcare a public good, but in this episode we’re taking a detour into another privatized American system that should be public: our railroads! Just like in US healthcare, private companies are falling asleep at the switch on managing our railroads, and just like in the healthcare sys...

Virtually all Americans know that our healthcare system is broken and that it’s working against us. But who is the villain in this story? Who is responsible for maintaining this healthcare system, and using it to profit off of patients? If we had to round up the usual suspects in a lineup, we’d probably end up with health insurance companies and big pharma. But what about hospitals? Many people li...

If you missed our annual Single Payer Strategy Conference, it’s your lucky day. Today we share a conference presentation all about the impact of Private Equity on healthcare (spoiler alert: it’s not good.) Our guests are Eagan Kemp , Health Care Policy Advocate at Public Citizen ; Rachel Madley , Health Policy Advisor to Medicare for All Act chief author Representative Pramila Jayapal...

When kids turn two or three years old, they learn to tell what is called a “primary lie,” which is lying without much sophistication or awareness of how the listener will perceive the lie (hint: you completely failed to fool your parents). But when we turn four, we learn to tell “secondary lies,” which take into account the listener’s likely reaction, and are more plausible. When we turn seven or...

Back in 2008, the TV show Breaking Bad asked a question that is still on a lot of Americans’ minds: How far would you go to pay for medical care? In Breaking Bad, the main character ends up building a meth empire to pay for his cancer treatment, which is a solution we don’t necessarily endorse, but you do what you have to do. Today we’re going to be talking about real life (slightly less dramatic)...

2013 was a big year — we had just survived 2012 (the year the Mayans thought the world was going to end), we were all doing the Harlem Shake on Vine, and — most importantly — our regular co-host Ben Day became the Executive Director of Healthcare NOW, the nation’s leading Medicare for All advocacy organization. In this episode, Gillian interviews Ben about the past decade i...

Starting on May 11, President Biden is ENDING the emergency COVID-19 regulations that have been in place since the start of the pandemic in January 2020. These regulations created (almost) a Medicare for All-type public funding system for vaccines, testing, and COVID-related care. While the pandemic itself is still raging, the end of the official Public Health Emergency (PHE) means that access to...

Our guest today is Rebecca Wood . Rebecca lived all over Virginia before her relocation to Massachusetts. Rebecca worked with many organizations and offices on Capitol Hill. Her healthcare work includes rallies, protests, press conferences, and conventions. Most notable, she told her and daughter Charlie’s story at the introduction of Senator Sanders’ Medicare For All Act of 2017 and testified bef...

Like many of our episodes, this topic drives our hosts to use some salty language. Use your best judgment if you’re listening near someone with tender ears. Hike up your trousers and throw on some long socks. We’re getting into the weeds on this one. Ben and Gillian discuss the digitization of our healthcare system and its far-reaching impacts on data privacy and patient health outcomes. We...

It’s a new year, which means everyone is coming out of the woodwork to make predictions about what’s in store for 2023. In this episode, we’re going to be making reckless, unverifiable claims about the future of the movement for healthcare justice, the public health crisis in this country, the political landscape, and yes – how an impending alien invasion might impact our fight for Medicare for Al...

Listeners, how many times has this happened to you? You find a great doctor, you make an appointment, and you think everything is fine… until you get the dreaded call from the insurance company that your sweet new doc is “Out of Network.” Well, you aren’t alone – just in the past few months, limited provider networks have been making news, as Johns Hopkins, one of the most prestigious hospitals in...

The 2022 midterm elections are MOSTLY in the books – thank again Georgia, for the endless run-offs that keep on giving, every two years it seems like. You’ve heard the national narrative: Democrats did surprisingly well, given how parties in power usually take big losses during the mid-terms, and particularly when Biden has such low approval numbers. Today we’ll talk about how healthca...

Today we’re talking about the relationship between taking your vows and taking your medicine. In 2020, more than a quarter of folks who got married said they took the plunge because one of the partners involved needed health insurance, and it seems like some couples are staying together for the insurance as well. In this episode we’ll break down how our healthcare system is set up to get us...