Medicare for All

Healthcare is a human right. With millions of Americans lacking any sort of  health insurance, it’s time our government steps in to protect our right to life. Through Medicare for All, we’ll guarantee health insurance for every citizen, permanent resident, and taxpayer. We’ll ensure quality healthcare and eliminate co-pays, surprise bills, and deductibles.

While the incumbent accepts money from major insurance companies, we listen to you. The majority of Americans support Medicare for All. [1] It’s not a part of a radical socialist agenda, it’s a lifesaving policy supported by most Americans.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 27 million Americans lacked health insurance. [2] In the 11 weeks leading up to June 4th, 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment and out of those, many have lost their health insurance coverage as well. [3] America is the world’s wealthiest nation and this is completely unacceptable. The tragedy is only exacerbated by the insurance industry, which not only profits off of our suffering, it funds campaigns and lobbies policymakers in order to maintain its power.

That power hurts Americans. Healthcare-related debt is the largest cause of family bankruptcy in the nation. In 2009, Harvard Medical School found that almost 45,000 Americans died because of a lack of health coverage. Health insurance policy isn’t about ideology or party. It’s about saving lives. It’s time our government protects the interests of the people. It’s time we enact Medicare for All.

 

What We Are Fighting For 

We’re fighting for Medicare for All: a single-payer national health insurance program that will guarantee healthcare for every American. With coverage that’s free at the point of care, we’ll eliminate premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and surprise bills. We’ll include vision, dental, in and out-patient care, reproductive and maternity care and prescription drugs to ensure that Americans are never limited in their healthcare access.

Modern problems require modern solutions. We’ll expand care to include mental health and substance abuse treatment, trauma and marriage counseling, and mindfulness counseling. 

It’s not enough just to treat disease. We must prevent it. By empowering the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, we’ll prohibit environmental and agricultural policies that damage Americans’ health. 

We’ll lower prescription drug prices by empowering Medicare to negotiate with major pharmaceutical companies and enabling patients and providers to purchase low-cost prescription drugs from other nations. Through the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act, we’ll halve prescription drug prices by pegging costs to median prices in five other major nations.

What It Will Do

By stepping up and caring for our people in the most basic areas, like health, we will unleash the power and spirit of the American people from their daily struggles of anxiety, sickness, scare, and medical debt. People will take less time off work and have more money in their pockets. Other issues—like mass incarceration, homelessness, and more—will also be alleviated once people are getting the mental and physical healthcare they need.

We will spend more on doctors, nurses, mental health specialists, dentists, and other professionals who provide services to people and improve their lives. We’ll invest in the development of new drugs and technologies that cure disease and alleviate pain—and not waste hundreds of billions of dollars a year on profiteering, huge executive compensation packages, and outrageous administrative costs. Said one billing representative: “The law allows us to charge whatever we want. If we want to charge a million dollars, she has to pay it.” Makary, M. The Price We Pay: What Broke American Healthcare and How to Fix It. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. It’s time to change the laws.