Dear members and friends of Health Care Justice•NC,
It’s already been a pretty eventful year for Medicare for All advocacy. While there’s almost no possibility of a bill being passed with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a Senate filibuster, we still have many opportunities to advance the issue for later success.
Our principal effort is to educate the public about Medicare for All, which we most effectively do through in-person presentations to various groups. To commemorate the pioneering work of our founder, Dr. Jessica Schorr Saxe, we compiled a brief history of HCJ•NC that includes a list of groups to whom we've given presentations. If your groups are not on the list, please invite us, or invite us back! We'll go anywhere to spread the word about the many genuine advantages of Medicare for All.
Lately, we have focused on the threat to the privatization of Medicare through Medicare Advantage (MA - better called Medicare DISadvantage) and a “stealth” move to shift patients into corporate-run healthcare plans called ACO/REACH, which you can learn about here. We have two significant victories to celebrate:
We hope that these developments may slow the tide of Medicare privatization but know that we need to stay on constant alert to avoid “Medicare Advantage for All” becoming our nation’s national healthcare system, with restricted choice of doctors and hospitals and unnecessarily high administrative costs, including big profits to corporations that would own and run it.
The new Medicare for All bills were introduced in both the House - HR 3421 - and Senate - S.1655 - on May 17 with more initial cosponsors than ever before. We hope you’ll help us encourage more Members of Congress to add their names in support; use the list here to call their offices and email their healthcare Legislative Aides. Even though I'm not his constituent, GA Senator Jon Ossoff graciously met with me in Washington and said that, while he strongly supports a universal healthcare system, he has reservations about the current proposal. But he listened, and perhaps he'll change his mind. Call your Members today, and either thank them for already supporting Medicare for All or tell them why they should. Your voice matters!
George Bohmfalk, MD