It’s been 9 months since Bernie Sanders - flanked by a dozen Democrats - officially announced his Medicare for All bill. Though numerous political fires are all raging at once these days, the single-payer movement is alive and well and still building steam.
Last week, medical professionals, politicians, activists and leaders of the Medicare for All movement held their annual Single-Payer Strategy Conference in Minnesota. The conference, jointly sponsored by the Labor Campaign for Single Payer and Healthcare NOW!, aimed to construct a national campaign to make Medicare for All a reality by building momentum through the 2020 elections.
If you’re interested, you can watch some of the conference on the Social Security Works Facebook page via their posts from June twenty second to the twenty-forth.
Although this conference helped shape the launch of a national campaign, that campaign will be executed on the ground locally. And that means you can help by taking the time now to get engaged with your local organizations fighting for single-payer.
Go to Healthcare-now.org and click “Join a local action group” under the Action tab. There you will find a state-by-state list of local organizations working for single-payer healthcare across the country. You may even find that your state is in need of a local advocacy group, in which case, consider being the founding member. We are going to need 50 state coverage to win this.
And, of course, continue to put pressure on members of congress to sign on as co-sponsors to the Medicare for All Act in the House and Senate. If they haven’t seen the writing on the wall yet, come the midterms this November they certainly will.
So, if making Medicare for All a reality as soon as possible is important to you, be sure to hit the share buttons to spread the word about Joining Your Local Single-Payer Advocacy Group via social media so that others in your network can spread the word too.
Honored to give the keynote speech @HCNow to a bunch of activists/heroes fighting for the *only* solution that will guarantee access to health care and bring down costs to what the rest of the developed world pays: #SinglePayer #Medicare4All pic.twitter.com/HW0sCRYE1V
— Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) June 25, 2018
TAKE ACTION
Find & Join your Local Single-Payer Advocacy Group via Healthcare NOW!
CALL/WRITE/TWEET your members of congress to push them to publicly support the Medicare for All Act before the Midterms:
FOR READING/SHARING
The Midterm Elections and Medicare For All (Healthcare NOW!)
Is Medicare-for-all a winning message for midterm elections? DSCC chairman weighs in (CBS)
Why So Many Democrats Are Embracing Single-Payer Health Care (The Atlantic)
"Medicare for All" is a winner in Democratic primaries (Axios)
Single-Payer Health Care Is The Key To Democratic Victory In 2018 (WBUR)
Posted June 26, 2018; Written by Best of the Left Communications Director, Amanda Hoffman
Hear the segment in the context of Best of the Left Edition #1192: Fighting for Single Payer and against our neoliberal health system
