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universal healthcare
Universal Healthcare Will Save Lives... and Could Save the Democratic Party
As the only wealthy country without universal health coverage, sticking to our current system is truly not “politically feasible.” Democratic leaders need to understand and embrace Americans' desire for change.
Oct 22, 2025
The ongoing government shutdown, a standoff over health insurance premiums, is a missed opportunity to truly reform healthcare and revive the Democratic Party.
Democrats have been hyper focused on restoring Medicaid cuts and preserving Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to blunt the harmful healthcare impact of the Republican budget. But this narrow strategy not only fails to address the core issues of the current system but ignores what most Americans want most: a system free from profit-driven conflicts of interest, prior authorizations, co-pays, deductibles, or the threat of bankruptcy.
As a practicing gynecologic oncologist, I witness the human toll of this political timidity every day. I’ve seen patients on chemotherapy skip nausea medications because of co-pays, delay a surveillance PET scan because of the deductible, or substitute ineffective online elixirs for proven treatments because they cost less. As president of Physicians for a National Health Program, I have heard from thousands of physicians who are struggling to uphold their professional commitment to high-quality care because health insurance companies routinely deny coverage for medically recommended treatments.
What I hear in my clinic is also reflected in the polls and crosses party lines: Americans want trustworthy, high-quality healthcare without conflicts of interest, co-pays, deductibles, or financial risk. A May 2025 Pew poll confirms this, with 68% of Americans, including 90% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans, believing the government should provide health insurance for all. A November 2024 Gallup poll shows 62% of Americans, including 90% of Democrats, 65% of Independents, and 32% of Republicans, think the federal government should guarantee health coverage for everyone. And a 2024 Marist Poll found 86% of Gen Z and 76% of Millennials also share the opinion that health insurance is the government's responsibility.
Championing universal healthcare gives Democrats a chance to move away from the status quo and win back frustrated voters, especially the youth.
Today, more people, regardless of insurance status, are being forced to make difficult healthcare choices based on their finances. I have patients who regularly ignore pain and nausea because they are behind on medical bills and cannot afford to seek care. Consider that in America, 66% of bankruptcies are linked to medical issues, and 80% of those who went bankrupt had health insurance when they incurred the debt. In 2023, the average household medical debt was $10,570, and in 2024, about 20% of adults aged 18-49 borrowed money to pay for healthcare costs. A 2025 KFF poll found that 70% of adults worry about medical or dental bills leading to debt.
Americans from all parties agree that our political and economic systems need change, and most believe Republicans, not Democrats, can deliver it. According to an April 2025 Navigator poll, 74% of Americans (including 71% of Democrats, 78% of Independents, and 77% of Republicans) think our system “needs major changes,” with 12% feeling “the system needs to be torn down completely.” The same poll shows that 51% of Americans see Democrats as “focused on preserving the way government works,” including 54% of Democrats, 43% of Independents, and 54% of Republicans. Meanwhile, 65% of those surveyed believe Republicans are focused on changing the government, including 65% of Democrats, 57% of Independents, and 68% of Republicans.
Republicans are giving us change, but it’s not what Americans were hoping for. Their comprehensive efforts to reduce healthcare access, dismantle public health systems, and cut funding for essential medical research will have deadly consequences. Specifically, the mortality impacts of the Republican budget reconciliation bill—which includes deep cuts to Medicaid, the elimination of ACA subsidies, rollbacks to Medicare drug access, and weakening of nursing home safety standards—are estimated to cause 51,000 preventable deaths each year. This tragic number adds to the approximately 45,000 preventable deaths already linked to lack of insurance. While we can estimate the increased death toll among the millions losing healthcare coverage, the long-term effects of defunding the public health system and losing future lifesaving research are impossible to measure.
Meanwhile, Democrats are defending the status quo instead of fighting for the comprehensive health care reform that Americans need. Despite the unpopularity of much of what the Trump administration has done, support for the Democratic Party from its core members remains slim, with historically low voter registration and approval numbers. Championing universal healthcare gives Democrats a chance to move away from the status quo and win back frustrated voters, especially the youth.
The main arguments against universal healthcare are that it is unaffordable and politically unfeasible. However, the cost issue is challenged by basic economic analysis: We could afford to cover everyone if we weren’t actively wasting 25-30% of our healthcare spending on bureaucracy, overhead, and excessive profits for the health insurance industry. There is no evidence that these corporations improve healthcare or make any meaningful contribution. To the contrary, privatized Medicare (Medicare Advantage) wastes resources, costs more, and results in worse outcomes. In fact, when states deprivatize Medicaid, they save money and improve outcomes. For example, Connecticut shifted from privatized to public Medicaid in 2011, leading to a 4.7% increase in early cancer detection, an 8% increase in cancer survival, and savings of over $4 billion over 13 years.
The US spends more per person than other developed nations but has worse health outcomes, including lower life expectancy and higher maternal and infant deaths. As the only wealthy country without universal health coverage, sticking to our current system is truly not “politically feasible.” Democratic leaders need to understand and embrace Americans' desire for change. They must fight for guaranteed universal healthcare—a system free from profit-driven conflicts, co-pays, deductibles, prior authorizations, and bankruptcy risks. Universal healthcare will save lives and may resuscitate the Democratic Party.
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Progressive Activist Avi Lewis Launches Bid for NDP Leadership in Canada
Lewis said NDP must “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
Sep 25, 2025
The longtime progressive activist Avi Lewis officially launched his bid for leadership of Canada's New Democratic Party, which he aims to revitalize with a platform of economic populism.
Lewis, a journalist and documentarian whose grandfather helped to found the NDP in 1961, says the way to bring the party back to relevance amid an electoral low point is to “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
At a kickoff party in Toronto on Wednesday, the former parliamentary candidate from Vancouver railed against the “Liberal-Conservative alliance” that dominates Canadian politics. The two major parties' leaders, Lewis said, "compete fiercely in public, while behind the scenes, they collude to boost corporate profits."
"In the name of protecting the country, the government is rapidly passing and proposing legislation that will change the culture and character of Canada," Lewis said. "From sweeping aside Indigenous rights and environmental protections for so-called nation-building projects, to rolling back higher taxes on the uberwealthy and digital giants, to the generational austerity of 15% cuts to public spending, to the $9 billion that materialized in an instant for the military this year, ramping up to $150 billion a year a decade from now—the changes afoot are extreme."
Lewis pledged to “build a government that is an instrument for the people, not for corporate Canada.”
The NDP—once Canada's third-largest national political party—has been ailing of late after a dismal showing in the nation's most recent parliamentary elections. The party, which held over 100 seats 14 years ago, dropped to a new low of just seven seats in 2025, not enough to even be recognized for committee assignments or federal funding.
The humiliating showing resulted in the resignation of Jagmeet Singh, who'd led the party for eight years, but was widely criticized by those on the left for his coziness with the establishment of the dominant Liberal Party and his failure to keep the NDP competitive. It is in this state of "political wilderness" that Lewis has emerged with an ambitious change agenda.
(Video: Avi Lewis for NDP Leader)
"Life in Canada today feels on the edge," Lewis said in a video released last week announcing his leadership run. "Everyone seeking a little stability, everyone being told 'You're all on your own.'"
He identified several causes of that precarity. One was the "economic attack" from US President Donald Trump, whom Lewis described as sending "disruption grenades" in the form of steep tariffs and annexation threats. But Lewis said that Trump merely "magnifies... the everyday emergency of trying to get by in an impossible economy."
According to one survey conducted in July, 57% of Canadians said their current incomes did not allow them to afford basic necessities like housing, groceries, energy, and cell phone plans.
"Working hard doesn't earn you a living," Lewis said.
"These days, every politician claims to be shocked by the costs," he continued. "What they don't talk about is why: The billions in profits for the tiny group of corporations that control every part of our economy. Three phone providers, three grocery giants, five oil companies, and the five big banks that fund them."
Lewis' plan to confront corporate power is years in the making. Alongside his wife, the acclaimed journalist and author Naomi Klein, Lewis rolled out the Leap Manifesto in 2015 as an agenda for the NDP. Leap focused on confronting the climate crisis, but its contents formed the basis of what he now refers to as a "Green New Deal." The accelerating climate emergency remains at the center of his agenda in 2025.
"Oil and gas CEOs," he said in the video, are "not just hoarding extreme wealth," but "foreclosing on our shared future."
Lewis has never held a parliamentary office, though he has run for a federal Vancouver-area seat twice before and achieved two third-place finishes, receiving 26% of the vote in 2021 and 12.5% in 2025.
In his bid to lead NDP, he has so far leaned heavily into his family legacy and his reputation as a lifelong activist who has "butted heads with the powerful," over issues like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the privatization of healthcare and public transit.
"For four decades," he said, "I have stood with workers, telling stories of working-class heroes and organizing for dignity in factories and fields, classrooms and care homes, shop floors and fishing fleets."
Lewis, who also identified free trade deals as job killers, proposed a "Green New Deal" as a means to revive Canadian industry and create "millions of good-paying jobs."
He has also proposed a wealth tax, a national cap on rent increases, a public option for groceries, and expanded universal healthcare that covers "medication to mental health."
During his speech Wednesday night, Lewis described NDP as "the only party that can accurately diagnose the cause of our everyday emergency, and offer solutions as big as the crises we face."
"The federal government has the power, the resources, and the responsibility to ensure the fundamentals of a good life—healthy food, truly affordable housing, functioning public transit, and hey, maybe a proper vacation once in a while," he said. "But we won’t get it if we don’t fight for it. And that’s where the NDP comes in. After all, the NDP is the original party of workers’ struggle. And in this moment of epic change and uncertainty, the party is needed as never before."
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A Battle for the Soul of America in Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt
There are Christians who are preaching and practicing the ministry of Jesus, the son of God, who himself was unhoused and undocumented and sided with the poor. And then there are Christian nationalists.
Jul 22, 2025
Most days, in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt, the old sanctuary at Christ Lutheran Church sits empty. Decades ago, it was home to a congregation of 3,000 people. By the late 1990s, that number had dwindled to seven. At the turn of the millennium, Jody Silliker, a young minister fresh out of seminary, was sent to shutter the downtown church, a mile from the state legislature in Harrisburg.
Instead, she immersed herself in the deindustrialized community, meeting unhoused families, the unemployed, migrant workers, sex workers, and other low-wage laborers. Just a few years after welfare reform eviscerated the social safety net and proclaimed the era of “personal responsibility,” Silliker retrofitted the church annex and opened a free medical clinic.
Earlier this spring, we visited Christ Lutheran. We’ve been on the road since April, meeting with leaders from poor and dispossessed communities in this country and sharing notes from our new book, You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty. As the Trump administration abducts our neighbors off the streets and eviscerates everything from Medicaid to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, we want to better understand what it will take to ignite a democratic awakening in this country. How, in the words of theologian Howard Thurman, the “masses of people, with their backs constantly up against the wall” in Donald Trump’s America, can push back together.
A Battle for the Bible in the Battleground State of Pennsylvania
In small towns, as well as cities like Harrisburg, there is an underreported but epic struggle being waged for the hearts and minds of everyday people, with ripple effects for the entire nation. And the church—its pulpit, pews, and survival programs—is a critical staging ground for that struggle. There are Christians who are preaching and practicing the ministry of Jesus, the son of God, who himself was unhoused and undocumented and sided with the poor, the sick, the indebted, the incarcerated, and the immigrant, while decrying the idolatry of tyrants.
And then there are Christian nationalists, whose religion of empire is more akin to the worship of Caesar than the Jesus of the scriptures.
Today, Christian nationalists are attempting to transform our democracy into their dominion and remake (or simply dismantle) the government in the image of Project 2025. Earlier this spring, even before Trump’s disastrous “Big Beautiful Bill” passed Congress, Paul Dans, the architect of Project 2025, marveled that the new administration’s policies were unfurling on a scale and scope beyond his “wildest dreams.” Now, those same Christian nationalists are gutting access to Medicaid, banning reproductive freedom and gender-affirming healthcare, criminalizing the unhoused, and scapegoating immigrant communities in the courts and Congress, even though the scriptures decry such actions. “Woe to you who deprive the rights of the poor, making women and homeless children your prey,” laments the prophet Isaiah.
Thankfully, there are brave faith leaders standing firmly in the breach, refusing to let the Bible and the church be hijacked by extremists. At Christ Lutheran, Jody Silliker’s successor, Pastor Matthew Best, is now following in her footsteps. Just a few miles from Life Center, an evangelical megachurch that hosted Elon Musk late in the 2024 election season, Pastor Best continues to transform his resplendent church into a community mission. On the second floor, volunteer dentists pull rotten teeth and perform root canals, cost-free. In the basement, nurses treat emergencies, mental health crises, and chronic health issues. More than 50 national flags hang from the ceiling, each representing the nationality of a patient. Since 2018, 100,000 people have walked under those flags to receive medical care. Nobody is asked for payment, documentation, or insurance.
In early July, right after Trump signed his Big Beautiful Bill, Pastor Best preached a sermon reminding his multiracial, multilingual, intergenerational, and predominantly poor congregation that they were not alone in feeling like exiles in their own land. As he put it:
Jeremiah 29 is a letter written to people in exile—or about to be. It’s sent to those who have lost everything: their homes, their land, their freedom, their safety. It’s sent to those who feel like strangers in a strange land, people who are trying to make sense of how everything they depended on has fallen apart. At the time of this letter, some of the people of Judah have already been taken into exile in Babylon. They were the first wave—the leaders, artisans, and young people deported when Babylon invaded. They are trying to build a life in a strange land. But back in Jerusalem, others are still there—living in a fragile illusion of normal. The temple still stands. A king still rules. But it won’t last. More exile is coming.
To bring his point home, Pastor Best translated the Bible into what he called “Harrisburg English”:
This is what the Lord says to all of you living in exile—the ones just barely scraping by, the ones pushed to the margins, the ones wondering if God has left.
“I see you. I haven’t abandoned you. Build your homes—even if they’re one-room apartments. Grow food—even if it’s a tomato plant in a pot. Love your families—whatever they look like. Create beauty in the middle of struggle. Pray for your city—even when it feels broken. Don’t check out. Don’t give up. For in its healing, you will find your own. Don’t listen to those who say things are fine. Don’t trust those who profit off your pain. Because I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “Plans for welfare and not for harm. Plans to give you a future and a hope. When you cry out, I will listen. When you search for me with your whole heart, you will find me. Not in the halls of Congress. Not behind gated communities. But in free clinics. In shared meals. In prayers whispered through tears. In justice rolling down like waters. I will gather you. I will bring you home.”
That, beloved, is the gospel in exile.
Pastor Best’s bottom-up ministry is mirrored by others in that area. His friends Tammy Rojas and Matthew Rosing, who have survived homelessness, incarceration, and low wages, are commissioned ministers with the Freedom Church of the Poor, a spiritual home for grassroots organizers founded during the first month of the Covid-19 pandemic. They are also longtime leaders of Put People First PA!, which organizes poor people across the state of Pennsylvania to defend Medicaid and demand universal healthcare.
In 2019, Rojas and Rosing led an effort to stop the corporate capture and closure of St. Joseph Hospital in Lancaster, an hour southwest of Harrisburg. For the couple, the fight couldn’t have been more personal: Rojas had been born at that hospital and Rosing received lifesaving care there on multiple occasions. Ultimately, despite their efforts, St. Joseph was closed.
After that defeat, they redoubled their efforts to organize within the region’s abandoned communities. Today, in the wake of Trump’s historic Medicaid cuts and as Rojas and Rosing anticipate the closure of more hospitals, they continue to recruit new members and allies for their “Healthcare is a Human Right” campaign at feeding programs and free clinics like the one at Christ Lutheran. Around their necks, they all too appropriately wear stoles that read: “Fight Poverty, Not the Poor” and “Jesus Was Homeless.”
Dominionism in the “City on the Hill”
Rojas and Rosing face formidable opposition in the region. In Lancaster, where they live, Christian nationalists are working hard to amass power. In recent years, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) has set up shop in that historically Anabaptist area. Once a fringe movement of the Christian Right, NAR has quietly built a sophisticated and well-funded national operation over the last couple decades. In 2024, the Southern Poverty Law Center described it as the “greatest threat to American democracy that most people have never heard of.”
NAR churches in Lancaster have proliferated, taking over, or “steeplejacking,” historic and dying churches. On first glance, such local church activity may appear quite benign. NAR leaders provide food and other material and spiritual aid through their ministries, artfully deploying the language of diversity and encouraging people to “come as you are.” Some families attend services just to sing lively renditions of contemporary Christian music. Indeed, many people join those churches, which have become de facto community centers, for the most human of needs: connection and fellowship.
Today, the work of Pastors Best, Rojas, and Rosing in Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt underscores the still-vital role of religion in advancing a more just and vibrant democracy in the Trump era.
Stick around long enough, though, and you’ll discover an institutional pipeline suffused with toxic theology that funnels people toward Christian nationalism. In their churches, food banks, recovery services, and community meetings, local NAR leaders offer individual and highly spiritualized explanations for this country’s systemic crises of poverty, homelessness, hunger, and addiction. The solution to these and other social problems, they insist, is fidelity to a dominionist God and a theology eager to bring Christian nationalism to, and keep it in, power. Forget science, reasonable public policy, or the separation of church and state. In meetings with more dedicated church activists, these same leaders invoke Biblical imagery to proclaim spiritual warfare against “demonic” influences in our government, schools, and family structures (that is, diverse expressions of religious, political, or gender identity).
This far-right movement melds its grassroots activity in south-central Pennsylvania with a broader campaign to influence a new generation of county and state politicians, law enforcement officials, businesspeople, and educators. In the years ahead, Christian nationalists like them, who now command power at the highest reaches of the federal government, will only intensify their activities across the country. Indeed, a number of figures within Trump’s cabinet and his coterie of advisers, as well as congressional leaders like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), have close ties to the Christian nationalist ecosystem. These are the same politicians who championed Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, including its historic tax cuts for the wealthy, increased military, detention, and immigration enforcement spending, and death-dealing cuts to the social safety net.
A Moral Resurrection in the Age of Trump?
To fight back, we need to forge new alliances across racial, religious, geographic, and partisan lines. Certainly, today’s ongoing political crisis should remind concerned Christians that they can’t sit out the battle for the Bible and should remind the rest of us that we can’t concede religion to extremists. Christian nationalists weaponize the Good Book because they believe they have a monopoly on morality and can distort the word of God with impunity.
The policy effects of their theological distortions will continue to be devastating. In early June, for example, the Minnesota state legislature voted to strip healthcare from undocumented immigrants, despite majority control by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. To rationalize his vote, state Rep. Isaac Schultz (R-10B) blithely argued: “The role of the church—the role of people of faith—is to care for our neighbors. Yes… But not in this instance, specifically.”
Clearly, Shultz has not studied the Bible closely enough. If he had, he would have discovered that the Bible’s 2,000 passages about poverty and justice constitute perhaps the most important mass media ever produced that had something good to say about immigrants, the poor, the sick, and otherwise marginalized people. In scripture after scripture, Jesus condemns the violent policies of empire, which enriches itself on the backs of the poor. Instead, he proclaims the Good News of Jubilee: a vision of social and economic emancipation for the entirety of humanity.
In this country, the liberatory heart of Christianity, among other religious traditions, has always been a source of strength for popular social movements. In every previous era, there were people who grounded their freedom struggles in the holy word and spirit of God. Today, the work of Pastors Best, Rojas, and Rosing in Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt underscores the still-vital role of religion in advancing a more just and vibrant democracy in the Trump era. In Harrisburg and Lancaster, these Christians are building a bottom-up and deeply moral movement that recognizes the material, spiritual, and emotional needs of everyday people.
“The church speaks to birth, death, and resurrection,” Pastor Best explained while giving us a tour of Christ Lutheran’s free medical clinic. “This is the resurrection.”
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