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For Immediate Release
September, 14 2017, 03:15pm EDT
Contact:
Scott McLarty, 202-904-7614, scott@gp.org
Green Party To Congress: Pass The Sanders Bill and HR 676, Enact Single-Payer Now
The Green Party is calling for swift passage of Single-Payer national health care, which now has Sen. Bernie Sanders' legislation in the U.S. Senate (Medicare for All Act of 2017) along with House bill 676 to make conversion to a universal health care system possible.
WASHINGTON
The Green Party is calling for swift passage of Single-Payer national health care, which now has Sen. Bernie Sanders' legislation in the U.S. Senate (Medicare for All Act of 2017) along with House bill 676 to make conversion to a universal health care system possible.
The Green Party of the United States supports a National Improved Medicare for All system that includes everyone living in the country, provides comprehensive benefits and eliminates cost-sharing such as co-pays and deductibles. The party has endorsed Single-Payer / Medicare For All ever since the party was founded.
On preliminary analysis, the Sanders bill has strengths, such as strong protections for full reproductive services, but also has weaknesses that should be amended before a Senate vote: it excludes long term care and allows investor-owned health facilities to operate in the system.
"Establishment Democrats and Republicans measure the value of health care and other policies according to the Dow, GDP, and bottom lines of corporations -- especially those with powerful lobbies and generous campaign contributions. The Green Party judges policies and legislation according to how they benefit working people and the poor," said Jody Grage, Secretary of the Green Party of the United States and Green Party of Washington Chapter Coordinator.
Greens said that the greatest benefit of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was expanding Medicaid to millions of Americans. At the same time, tens of millions of people in the U.S. have expensive but inadequate coverage or no coverage at all. The ACA has boosted the profits of health insurers, private hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies.
The Green Party recognizes that one hundred years of failed incremental reforms has left us with only one choice that is acceptable to the public, a Single-Payer system such as National Improved Medicare for All or a National Health Service.
"Every other developed country in the world guarantees its citizens health care. We don't have universal health care yet in the U.S. because too many Democrats and Republicans are either loyal to private insurance, pharmaceutical, and other medical industries or they buy into a fraudulent ideology that elevates the free market over human needs, or both," said Dr. Margaret Flowers, former Green candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.
"Congress now has the chance to make health care a human right. The Green Party urges all people who believe in that right to continue to build the movement for Single-Payer and push members of Congress to support strong legislation that ends the commodification of health care. We will have to guard against efforts to weaken Medicare for All legislation," said Dr. Flowers.
See also:
GreenStream on Aug. 23: Green Party livestream interview with Single-Payer organizer Ursula Rozum
News advisory: Green Party of the United States, August 17, 2017
Watch the interview
Green Party to Sen. Bernie Sanders: Introduce Single-Payer / Medicare For All in your Senate bill
Press release: Green Party of the United States, March 29, 2017
"The Green Party supports single-payer universal health care and preventive care for all"
https://www.gp.org/we_support_single_payer
https://www.gp.org/social_justice_2016#sjHealthCare
Senate Debates Billions for Insurers while Public Demands Medicare for All
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Health Over Profit for Everyone, September 8, 2017
Sanders' Single-Payer Plan: "Politicians Must Take a Stand"
Institute for Public Accuracy, September 13, 2017
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The Green Party of the United States is a grassroots national party. We're the party for "We The People," the health of our planet, and future generations instead of the One Percent.
(202) 319-7191LATEST NEWS
'Nonstarter': Senate GOP Rejects New Dem Deal to End Government Shutdown
"Mr. President, the ball is in your court right now," Sen. Bernie Sanders implored President Donald Trump. "Show us what a great dealmaker you are."
Nov 07, 2025
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday offered—and Republican leadership rejected—a compromise deal to end the longest federal shutdown in US history, an agreement under which Democrats proposed to vote to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of expiring Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies.
"It's clear we need to try something different," Schumer (D-NY) asserted on the Senate floor, noting the 14 failed upper chamber votes on the short-term continuing resolution passed by the House of Representatives in September to fund the government through November 21.
“All Republicans have to do is say ‘yes’ to extend current law for one year," he said. "This is a reasonable offer that reopens the government, deals with healthcare affordability, and begins a process of negotiating reforms to the ACA tax credits for the future. Now the ball is in the Republicans’ court. We need Republicans to just say yes."
.@SenSchumer: "Democrats are ready to clear the way to quickly pass a government funding bill that includes health care affordability. Leader Thune just needs to add a clean one-year extension of the ACA tax credits to the CR so that we can immediately address rising health care… pic.twitter.com/HvgLZHhhhb
— CSPAN (@cspan) November 7, 2025
Schumer's proposal involved a “clean” extension of the ACA tax credits that are set to expire at the end of this year, meaning they would exclude new eligibility restrictions that many Republican lawmakers are seeking to impose. Schumer also floated the creation of a bipartisan committee tasked with negotiating a further extension of ACA subsidies.
After consulting with GOP colleagues, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) rejected the Democrats' offer as a "nonstarter." Republicans have repeatedly balked at voting on the ACA subsidies before the shutdown—now in its 38th day—ends.
"The Obamacare extension is the negotiation. That's what we're going to negotiate once the government opens up," Thune said. "We need to vote to open the government—and there is a proposal out there to do that—and then we can have this whole conversation about healthcare."
Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also dismissed Schumer's proposal, writing on social media that "health in$urance companies applaud Schumer’s proposal to extend Obamacare subsidies for one year."
"Another year of insane profits at the expense of consumers and American taxpayers," added Graham, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the health insurance industry during his congressional career.
The Democrats' new offer came as a legal battle over Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits plays out, as hundreds of thousands of federal employees are working without pay, and hundreds of commercial airline flights have been delayed or canceled.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joined Democrats in urging his GOP colleagues to accept the new offer.
"We are now in the 38th day of a government shutdown," Sanders said on the Senate floor Friday. "That means that federal employees all over this country who have to feed their families are not getting paychecks. It means that air traffic controllers are forced to work crazy hours, and we worry about the safety of our flights right now. We worry about Capitol Police officers right here in DC who are having a hard time feeding their families."
LIVE: Donald Trump claims to be a dealmaker. The ball is now in his court. Help negotiate a deal which protects the health care of tens of millions of Americans and let us end the shutdown today. https://t.co/f9Gpi7wd8W
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 7, 2025
Sanders continued:
These are hardworking people who are doing important work. They deserve respect. They deserve to be paid. This shutdown must end as quickly as possible.
And on top of the fact that we have hundreds of thousands of workers not getting paid, we now have a president who—for the first time in the history of this country—is willing to allow our kids, low-income, working-class children, to go hungry in order to try to make a political point. A point, by the way, that the American people are seeing through.
Despite appealing a judge's Thursday directive to fully fund November SNAP benefits, the Trump administration told states on Friday that it would release funding for the food aid in compliance with the court order.
"Well, Mr. President, the ball is in your court right now," Sanders added. "Show us what a great dealmaker you are. Help us negotiate a deal which protects the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans and let us end this shutdown today. We can end it in the next few hours."
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Cornell Becomes Latest University to Submit to Trump's 'Extortion' Over Student Protests
The government claimed that Cornell had violated civil rights law by allowing students to protest against Israel. Even though the agreement required the school to admit no wrongdoing, it still agreed to pay a $30 million fine.
Nov 07, 2025
Cornell University became the latest school to cave to demands from the Trump administration on Friday, inking a deal that would restore $250 million in unpaid research funds stripped by the federal government as part of its crusade against higher education and efforts to punish schools that allowed students to freely express pro-Palestine views.
Following a months-long investigation by the government for allegedly violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the Ivy League school agreed to pay a $30 million fine to the government, which claimed that Cornell had violated the law by not sufficiently cracking down on student protests against Israel's genocide in Gaza. The administration accused the school of failing “to protect Jewish students.”
In March, the Department of Education launched investigations into 60 major US universities, with Education Secretary Linda McMahon describing students' peaceful demonstrations against Israel that had swept campuses the previous year as "relentless antisemitic eruptions."
As The Guardian reported earlier this week, the civil rights investigation at Cornell had been spurred by a nonspecific, anonymous complaint that a professor “is supporting Hammas [sic] and their beliefs. He is literally brain washing students to hate and discriminate towards a certain religions [sic]–Jews." The complaint demanded that the professor be "black listed" from teaching.
Following this complaint, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights announced an investigation into the school for "failing to respond to incidents of harassment."
In a letter to the school community on Friday, Cornell's president, Michael Kotlikoff, said that the resolution made explicit that its agreement to pay out the lofty fine to the Trump administration was "not an admission of wrongdoing" by the university.
In addition to paying the fine, the school also had to set aside another $30 million to invest in "research programs that will directly benefit US farmers through lower costs of production and enhanced efficiency.”
And while Kotlikoff said he would refuse a deal that allowed the government to “dictate our institution’s policies,” the agreement requires the school to comply with several of the Trump administration's ideological goals.
It agreed to restrict its use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and turn over data on the racial makeup of its student body to demonstrate that it is complying with the 2023 Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action. It also agreed to train staff using a Justice Department memo ordering colleges to abandon "transgender-friendly” policies.
Cornell also agreed to "conduct annual surveys to evaluate the campus climate for Cornell students, including the climate for students with shared Jewish ancestry." The school specifically agreed to query students about "whether they believe the changes Cornell has made since October of 2023," when Israel launched a two-year genocide in response to Hamas attack, "have benefited the Cornell community."
The Trump administration has notably ordered schools to abide by a wide-ranging definition of "antisemitism" that not only punishes displays of bigotry against Jewish people, but also criticisms of Israel's government and policies.
Cornell also agreed to seek out “experts on laws and regulations regarding sanctions enforcement, anti-money laundering, and prevention of terrorist financing,” suggesting that the school will be expected to discipline and investigate pro-Palestinian organizations on campus, which the administration has baselessly accused of "material support" for terrorism.
Cornell's agreement with the administration comes as students at more than 100 campuses across the country have launched demonstrations against Trump's efforts to coerce schools into signing his “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” in exchange for priority federal funding and other “positive benefits.” Critics have described it as a "loyalty oath" and an "extortion agreement."
Though several schools have declined to sign onto the compact, Cornell is not the first school to bend to the Trump administration's demands to restart the flow of federal funding: Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia have all cut similar deals.
Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, has argued that there was little basis for Cornell to be fined for civil rights violations.
"If the Trump administration had evidence that Cornell systemically discriminated against Jewish students in violation of Title VI, it wouldn't let the university off the hook for a $30 million investment in research about AI, robotics, and farming," Jaffer said. "But, of course, there's no such evidence. The settlement only confirms what we already knew—that the Trump administration's Title VI allegations were baseless and made in bad faith."
"That doesn't mean there weren't antisemitic incidents on Cornell's campus. There were. But there's just no support for the notion that Cornell or other major American universities were indifferent to antisemitism," he continued. "The problem wasn't that universities were indifferent to antisemitism, but that they allowed trustees, advocacy groups, demagogues, etc. to pressure them into treating as 'antisemitism' all kinds of political expression and advocacy that was entirely legitimate."
A report from the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association, which analyzed discrimination complaints sent to the Civil Rights Office found that "all but one of the 102 antisemitism complaint letters we have analyzed focus on speech critical of Israel; of these, 79% contain allegations of antisemitism that simply describe criticisms of Israel or Zionism with no reference to Jews or Judaism; at least 50% of complaints consist solely of such criticism."
Though the payout was far less than the $200 million settlement Columbia agreed to pay earlier this year, Spencer Beswick, a postdoctoral associate at Cornell's Humanities Scholars Program, wrote on social media that his university was guilty of "capitulation to extortion."
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'I’m Scared For My Parents': Oregon Teen Pleads With City Council to Rein In ICE
“As a 16-year-old, I shouldn’t be scared," said the boy at a meeting in a Portland suburb. "I should be focusing on school.”
Nov 07, 2025
The testimony of a 16-year-old from Hillsboro, Oregon at a city council meeting this week gave a clear picture of what it's like to be a young person in a community that's been targeted by President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign, with the boy describing his fear of being detained by masked federal agents at school or of his parents being taken away while they are at work.
“I just want to tell you guys that I’m scared for my parents to walk out the house because I might not be able to say goodbye to them if they go to work,” the teenager, who was identified as Manny, told Hillsboro City Council on Tuesday at a meeting where residents of the Portland suburb gave more than three hours of public testimony on the impact of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the town.
The Portland Immigration Rights Coalition told Oregon Public Broadcasting this week that at least 135 people have been arrested by ICE and other federal agencies in Washington County, where Hillsboro is located, since Trump deployed them to the Portland area.
The county, which is the most diverse in Oregon, declared a state of emergency this week over immigration enforcement, allowing officials to use $200,000 in contingency funds for community organizations that help residents impacted by the surge in arrests.
Manny was one of many residents who spoke at the meeting, calling on city councilors to do more to oppose the federal operations and demand that city police work to protect the community from ICE.
“I might not ever be able to say bye or see [my parents] again if you guys don’t side with us," he said in the statement, which went viral on social media after the meeting. "And I’m scared because of it, because they fought so hard to come here and choose a life for their kids.”
Devastating— “I’m afraid for my parents to leave the house. They treat us like dogs because of the color of our skin. I shouldn’t be scared, I should be focusing on school.”
A 16yo American living in fear of the Trump regime’s ICE goons terrorizing brown people pleads for help. pic.twitter.com/fDgKfLPeHl
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 6, 2025
He drew applause when he said Trump "acts like a child," and went on to describe the anxiety he lives with daily as federal agents make arrests in the area.
"I'm scared that I'm never going to be able to see all my friends again, I'm scared that their parents are gonna be gone one day, I'm scared that all of us are gonna have to fend for ourselves, and I'm scared that one day at school, that I'm gonna get held by people... that I can't identify because they wear masks," he said.
“As a 16-year-old, I shouldn’t be scared," he added. "I should be focusing on school.”
Other residents described being afraid to send their children to school, and Juan Pedro Moreno Olmeda, a soccer coach at Hillsboro High Shool, was joined by several students as he described the toll ICE arrests are taking on children in the community.
"We recently had one of our teammates lose a father and two uncles, and another lose their older brother; they were taken by ICE,” Moreno Olmeda said. “I want you to look at these kids and think about all the sacrifices that they would have to go through to become that financial pillar for their household. They would maybe have to stop going to school. They would have to give up on soccer for sure. They would have to find jobs in order to become that pillar for their household.”
Hillsboro resident Sandra Nuñez-Smith added that her brother had been arrested by ICE in front of his stepson.
“He had just gotten into his car, and his stepson was barely getting into the back seat when he was pushed out of the way by an ICE agent—or bounty hunter—so they could get to my brother,” she told council members. “He was wrongfully taken due to a paperwork error at the county clerk’s office. He was not given his rights or due process, and no effort was made to investigate the current status of his case.”
Hillsboro is a sanctuary city and its police do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, but Mayor Beach Pace and Police Chief Jim Coleman said last month that city authorities also "cannot intervene in ICE operations and cannot assist or protect individuals from federal arrest or legal consequences if they interfere with ICE operations."
Manny was among the residents who called on the City Council to pass ordinances to protect residents, hold masked and unidentified agents accountable for assaulting and detaining people, and provide guidance to local businesses on prohibiting ICE from their premises.
Police, said Hillsboro resident and former Washington County sheriff’s deputy Red Wortham, "can set a standard. They can document what happens, respond to emergency calls, and make it clear that follow-up will occur later."
"It is a significant failure of law enforcement to ignore calls," said Wortham, "about terrifying, dangerous, armed takeovers of cars, businesses, and people by seemingly private armed thugs in masks.”
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