Heal This Sick Country: ‘Hands Up’ for the National Day of Action for Single Payer

On Jan 17, 2025, on the heels of the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, we wrote about the failed system of our corporate controlled healthcare and the outrage against the health insurance industry the shooting spawned. We mentioned the possibility of setting a National Day of Action in 2025 to demand freeing healthcare from profit and covering everyone under a national single payer plan.

Today, we call on people across the country to gather on May 31, 2025, to put their “Hands Up” for:

• The recognition by our government that healthcare is a human right;
• The elimination of private health insurance and the banning of for-profit delivery of care;
• The enactment of a publicly financed, national single-payer program that would provide comprehensive coverage to everyone; and
• The transformation of care delivery from profit-seeking ventures into services organized to serve the people of our country, a system in which all caregivers are freed from corporate control.

President Donald Trump’s inauguration has introduced the prospect of severe hardships to working class and low-income people, people with disabilities, the elderly, and children with proposed cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security necessary to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. This moment demands more than the protection of our public programs; it demands a national, single-payer healthcare program, free from profit, for everyone. One people, one plan.

The complicity of our government in the profit-making enterprise of health insurance has been exposed once again when, on Monday April 7, the Trump administration raised payment rates for Medicare Advantage insurers by 5.1%, significantly more than the Biden administration’s proposed increase of 2.2%, which was bad enough. This rate increase has the potential to increase payments to MA by $25 billion next year. However, the final sum will be closer to $60 billion, when the impact of gaming the system through risk scoring is included.

Paying health insurance premiums to a for-profit company that has been given permission to restrict and withhold necessary care is the great scam of modern U.S. healthcare.

As predicted, Medicare Advantage continues to gain enrollment because they offer lower premiums compared to Traditional Medicare. Now they can expect payment from the Medicare trust fund at a higher rate as they have almost every year under Democrat and Republican administrations since 2016. Early this month, while the rest of the market spun out of control due to the announcement of tariffs, insurance stocks soared after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) announced the Medicare Advantage rate hike.

Despite rate increases, Medicare Advantage will continue to operate within narrow networks that often don’t include specialty care, such as Cancer Centers of Excellence. Unlike Traditional Medicare, beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage must accept pre-authorization requirements to receive care that create the delays and denials of care. Many seniors are unaware that in all but four states, once they have enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, they cannot change to Traditional Medicare without being subjected to underwriting and the potential of very high premiums if they have preexisting conditions. Paying health insurance premiums to a for-profit company that has been given permission to restrict and withhold necessary care is the great scam of modern U.S. healthcare.

Medicare is only one part of the privatization of government sponsored health insurance: Medicaid is now largely privatized in 42 states, subjecting children from low-income families and low-income adults to the delays and denials that are the mainstay of cost controls in managed care private insurance plans. Seventy five percent of all Medicaid beneficiaries now are enrolled in a Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO), and Medicaid MCO denials are twice as high as denials in Medicare Advantage. Five Fortune 500 health insurance companies enroll 50% of all Medicaid beneficiaries, all publicly traded and high performing profit makers.

Over 90 million Americans eligible for government supported healthcare, both Medicaid and Medicare, are now captives of private insurance managed care schemes that control their access to healthcare. Many more millions on Traditional Medicare are being “aligned” by CMS into profit-seeking Accountable Care Organizations. The underlying profit extraction inherent in these schemes prevents critical services from reaching the right people at the right time.

The same can be said for employer-based insurance where workers are paying excessive premiums to health insurance companies to be given the privilege of paying deductibles and coinsurance that make accessing care so expensive that many forgo needed services. According to the Commonwealth Fund, premiums and deductibles consume 10% of the median household income in the U.S. This means that every household with employer health insurance making $80,610 per year or less is underinsured. Employers are faced with increasing insurance premiums for their employees that challenge their ability to stay in business, or in the case of public schools, the ability to keep schools open.

Enough is enough! Over 70 local and national organizations have endorsed the National Day of Action. On May 31, join an action or plan an action in your community. Focus the outrage to move the engine of change and put single payer on the nation’s agenda and remove profit from healthcare. On May 31, put your “Hands Up” for National Single Payer—an Improved Medicare for All free from profit with everybody in and nobody out. Nothing less can heal the nation.