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Medicare for All

De: Benjamin Day and Stephanie Nakajima - Healthcare-NOW
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  • Benjamin Day and Gillian Mason of Healthcare-NOW break down everything you need to know about the social movement to make healthcare a right in the United States. Medicare for All!
    ©2023 Healthcare-NOW Education Fund, Inc.
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Episodios
  • “Hot Virus Summer”: The Next Pandemic

    “Hot Virus Summer”: The Next Pandemic
    Jul 15 2024
    It’s our 100th episode folks, and we are celebrating the only way we know how – by sharing our predictions of the grim, apocalyptic future that surely awaits us if we fail to get our healthcare system together! That’s right, we’re talking about the next pandemic, and if experts are right, it’s coming sooner than we think. In addition to several somewhat less familiar pathogens on the rise this summer, COVID is back, and this time it’s FLiRTy. Today we’ll go into some of the outbreaks currently threatening to explode into our next global disaster and explore how prepared our for-profit healthcare system is to keep us safe. Spoiler: It isn’t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErXbxe4U-QQ Show Notes This emerging new pandemic situation is pretty serious, and more people should be taking it seriously. Forbes healthcare reporter Alex Knapp called this: “Hot Virus Summer.” First, COVID is up! Again! It’s important to point out that COVID never really left – in 2023 75,000 people died from COVID 19, nearly 1 million were hospitalized, and plenty of people are still suffering from Long COVID. Now we have the new FLiRT variants — sexy! There are almost 34,000 new cases per week globally. Next up: Bird Flu, which has historically tended to infect birds, is evolving and has begun to infect mammals. For now, that mostly means livestock – so far 129 dairy herds in 12 US states. As far as animals are concerned this is already a pandemic – it’s impacting industries all over the world and could cause shortages of meat and dairy. You may be panicking: IS OUR CHEESE SAFE? Don’t worry, most commercially available dairy products are pasteurized, which kills the virus. There have, however, been three cases of the virus in humans reported in the US. Around the world, more than 50% of people infected with Bird Flu die from the virus. All three of those people in the US worked on farms in direct contact with birds and livestock, and right now the CDC is just limiting their warnings about Bird Flu to folks who also work in close contact with animals. BUT, scientists are warning that at any time the virus could mutate and become transmissible between humans, at which point, we would be facing epic disaster. How likely is that to happen? In August 2023, Dr. Michael Greger said of Bird Flu, "The question is not if, but when.” In addition to COVID and Bird Flu, Mpox (fka Monkey Pox) is having another moment, as is West Nile Virus, so there are a lot of ingredients in the virus stew we’re cooking. So the best indicator of future outcomes is to look at how we’ve fared in similar situations in the past. Luckily (or not), the 2020 COVID outbreak is still fresh in some of our minds. You may remember that we, as a country, were not particularly well-prepared. For one, our profit-driven healthcare system creates disparities of access and care, which were exacerbated by the pandemic. Also, we don’t have a truly cohesive public health program in this country. Health departments in various counties, municipalities, and states work largely independently of each other, so there was little to no coordination on surveillance and testing. We had to rely on private companies for important preventative measures like PPE and, most notably, vaccines (the research and development for which were PUBLICLY FUNDED with our tax dollars.) During pandemics, a lot of people stopped going to healthcare facilities for elective procedures and surgeries - the real moneymakers for the for-profit healthcare system. That led to layoffs of staff at the same time that patients who desperately needed care struggled to get it. In countries with a national health system, hospitals don’t lose money if people stop going; they have a fixed amount to cover the operating expenses based on past history. So you don’t see mass layoffs and shrinking of the healthcare workforce when they are most needed. So if we were to do the whole pandemic over again...
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    38 m
  • The View from Capitol Hill: A Very Special Conference Episode

    The View from Capitol Hill: A Very Special Conference Episode
    Jun 17 2024
    It's the most wonderful time of the year! For activists in the movement to make Medicare for All a reality, this is the week when we gather to plot, scheme, and kvetch. Welcome to the 2024 Annual Medicare for All Strategy Conference, “Healthcare Beyond the Ballot Box,” organized by Healthcare NOW! For those of you who are attending the conference right now, you are getting a sneak preview of our Very Special Conference Episode! Since our theme this year is about what happens to Medicare for All in an election year — and beyond — we wanted to invite some of our favorite policy people with their fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in DC to help us sort out what’s happening with healthcare on Capitol Hill and what role we can play to get some justice out of DC in the coming year! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n36v0eTV1a8&t=1167s powerpress Our guests are Eagan Kemp and Alex Lawson. Eagan Kemp is the health care policy advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. He is an expert in health care policy and served as a senior analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office prior to coming to Public Citizen. Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works, the convening member of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition— a coalition made up of over 340 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans. Show Notes With one of our major candidates being a guy who is solidly against Medicare for All and the other being Trump, is 2024 a bad federal election cycle, or the worst federal election of our lifetime, and why? Alex puts a positive spin on it: we are closer to M4A with a Biden presidency than any other Democratic presidency. He's definitely not a M4A guy, but all his other economic policies are based on Sanders-esque populism, rather than Obama-esque neo-liberalism. We've seen Biden enact serious corporate reform in several sectors, and in a second Biden administration, taking on corporate greed and sociopathy in health insurance is on the agenda. On the other hand, we know exactly what's at stake with another Trump presidency, driven entirely by profit for his billionaire friends. Eagan notes that there has been movement on Medicare in recent years, including die-hard GOPs shying away from talking about cuts to Medicare until after the election. At the same time, we're seeing Biden moving more toward the M4A movement and the folks trying to expand and improve traditional Medicare. We're seeing insurance companies running scared, feeling the pressure from our movement in a way they haven't before. Alex notes that Biden's economic vision contains a lot that Medicare for All folks can work with. Our movement worked hard to expand Medicare to include vision, hearing, and dental, which was ultimately included in Biden's Build Back Better plan. We didn't get that, but we did get prescription drug negotiations, which is a huge part of improving Medicare before we expand it to everyone. (Go back and listen to another episode where we were joined by Alex to discuss prescription drug negotiations for more details.) We've also seen a lot of good work against Medicare privatization, via Medicare Advantage, and that solidarity has moved the ball a lot - more than ever before to restrain private insurance companies. We didn't just give up when we knew Biden wouldn't sign M4A; we pivoted to expanding benefits and reversing the privatization with a lot of success. Eagan found a silver lining in - of all places - the subject of private equity in healthcare. He thinks we've passed the peak of PE ravaging healthcare, and they are now backing off the healthcare sector in part because of increased pressure from the DOJ, FTC and HHS. That's due to pressure from doctors, patients, and whistleblowers. Eagan also notes that the Trump administration pilot of throwing seniors in traditional Medicare into private relationships with providers.
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    Menos de 1 minuto
  • Dude, Where’s My Union Health Plan?

    Dude, Where’s My Union Health Plan?
    May 6 2024
    We are in the middle of a resurgence of organized labor in the US. From Amazon workers to auto workers and grad students to baristas at Starbucks, everyone is getting in on the action! One of the big reasons workers are so hot to get that union card is because of… you guessed it, healthcare! Today we’re going to be talking union healthcare plans – how they work and how workers have managed to use collective bargaining to resist the national erosion of healthcare access. Most importantly, we’re going to take a deep dive into why, even with better healthcare, unions have been leaders in the fight for Medicare for All, and how they might save the rest of us from corporate healthcare hell. Our guest Jim McGee has spent his entire career working in union health benefits, starting with the Plumbers and Pipefitters local he belonged to in Harrisburg Pennsylvania. For the past 20 years, he has been the administrator of the health benefits plan for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689. He’s on the steering committee for the labor campaign for single payer healthcare, and he’s joining us today from Bethesda, MD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNFBkHBrpUY Show Notes Jim educates us on the two types of union health plans: Unionized workers with a single employer (think nurses or teachers) earn employer-sponsored health benefits much like unorganized workplaces, but the cost and benefit sets of those plans can be negotiated if the workforce is unionized. Taft-Hartley plans are multiemployer plans that are jointly managed by multiple companies and the union within the same industry. The workers pay while they're working to have health insurance when they're not. Taft Hartleys exist in industries where there's a lot of turnover, like the building trades. A worker may have many different employers and many periods of unemployment over their careers. Typically both those options sound a lot better than what your average non-union worker is getting from their employer, though they are still subject to same rising costs and economic pressures as every other health insurance plan. Given that union members are more likely to have health coverage than non-union workers, it’s interesting that unions have been at the forefront of the movement for Medicare for all. Many unions come from a rich progressive tradition that looks past the short term to the long term value of guaranteed healthcare for all workers. Jim also shares that the unions that are more exposed to competitive pressure in their environment are more likely to be supportive of Medicare for All. This is especially evident in less urban areas where locals are facing more non-union competition. Jim notes that throughout his career, healthcare has been #1 cause of strikes. Taking it off the table would not only benefit the workers, it would benefit their entire community. Small businesses and non-union employers that offer poorer or no healthcare benefits to their employees often stay afloat on the backs of the unionized employers in their community that do offer good health benefits; this is an inquitable and unsustainable system. Speaking of strikes, graduate student workers at Boston University are on strike right now over healthcare benefits among other things. Not only would Medicare for All take health insurance off the negotiating table (making more room for workers to bargain for pay, safety and other benefits), it would take away a the ability of employers to weaponize health insurance to break strikes; solidarity can crumble quickly when the employer stops paying those premiums at the first of the month. Follow and Support the Pod! Don’t forget to like this episode and subscribe to The Medicare for All Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform! This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund! If you want to support our work, you can donate at our website, healthcare-now.org.
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    43 m
Hygiene & Healthy Living Ciencia Política
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