Message to Democrats: Get on Board With Medicare For All or Go Home

Amid surging support for Medicare for All at the grassroots--which can be seen both in recent polls and at anti-Trumpcare protests, where demonstrators have brandished signs declaring "healthcare is a human right"--activists, physicians, and policy experts are imploring Democratic lawmakers to either get on board with the growing majority of their constituents, or go home.

This coming Monday, July 24, activists across the country are set to target Democratic lawmakers who have yet to sign off on Rep John Conyers' Medicare for All legislation. The nationwide events, coordinated by the group Millions March for Medicare 4 All, are part of a growing call "for America to do for its citizens what literally every other developed nation in the world has had for decades."

"The size of one's bank account should never be the determining factor in whether one gets medical care," said Beverly Cowling, the organization's co-founder. "This is the 21st century, not the Dark Ages, and we will not stop until every American has access."

"We're not going to wait around for our members of Congress to say, 'Now it's politically feasible.'"
--Dr. Carol Paris, Physicians for a National Health Program

Responding to politicians and commentators who argue that incremental improvements to Obamacare and the implementation of a public option are the most practical steps toward universal coverage, Dr. Carol Paris, president of Physicians for a National Health Program, said in an interview on Democracy Now! that such steps amount to "creating another opportunity for the insurance companies...to put all the sickest people in the public option and keep all the healthiest young people in their plans."

"We really need to go forward now to a national, improved Medicare for All," Paris concluded. "And really, the bill in Congress, H.R. 676, Congressman Conyers's bill, is the way we need to go."

Writing for Common Dreams on Thursday, National Nurses United executive director RoseAnn DeMoro expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that the public option is "fool's gold."

Far from being a step on the path to universal healthcare, the public option "could undermine the movement for single-payer, discrediting a fully publicly financed system that is not a feeble adjunct to the private insurance market," DeMoro wrote.

She went on:

The Congressional Budget Office in 2013 concluded that adding a public option would not even slice the number of uninsured, and could even encourage employers to dump workers they now cover into the ACA exchanges. With millions still either uninsured or paying exorbitant costs for care, imagine promoting a publicly financed Medicare for all to a public that sees a public option that is just as unethical as the notorious private insurers, or a financial wreck that just went belly up.

Analysts tracking public opinion on healthcare have been startled by the speed with which the debate over Trumpcare has shifted popular attitudes to the left, in the direction of Medicare for All.

As Common Dreams reported on Thursday, 62 percent of Americans--and 80 percent of Democratic voters--now believe it is "the federal government's responsibility to make sure that all Americans have healthcare coverage."

Indeed, as Max Fine, one of the architects of Medicare, toldThe Intercept's Zaid Jilani recently, the original intent of the program's creators was to expand it to everyone. Medicare for all, Fine concluded, "is only real answer" to our current healthcare woes.

The job of single-payer proponents now, Dr. Paris emphasized, is to make it politically damaging for Democrats who refuse to listen to their constituents and instead remain committed to a failed for-profit system, under which millions remain uninsured.

"We're not going to wait around for our members of Congress to say, 'Now it's politically feasible.' If we wait for that, we're going to be waiting for the rest of my life, your life, and many more lives," Paris said.

To translate popular attitudes into public policy, Paris said, "it's going to take a movement of movements, and it's going to take the American people making it toxic for our elected officials not to get on board with this."

Watch Paris's full interview on Democracy Now!:

Beyond calling forcefully for Medicare for All during demonstrations against Trumpcare, activists are urging the creation a broader, national movement that will rally support for Medicare for All and pressure lawmakers to act.

On Tuesday, a coalition of dozens of progressive organizations announced the launch of a new initiative called "The Summer of Progress" with the goal of pressuring House Democrats to support, among other legislation, Conyers' H.R. 676.