Lately the media’s full of talking heads who are busy “curbing our expectations” about what’s possible when it comes to healthcare reform. A lot of folks seem to think we’ve done it all!
They say we just have to live with the fact that there are millions of insured Americans facing out of pocket costs that can exceed $10,000 a year – making cost a major obstacle in spite of having insurance – and millions more who can’t get health insurance at all.
Well, guess what? We’re not going to “live with it.” HEAL California will work ceaselessly, as long as Americans continue to suffer healthcare inequality. We recognize that it’s tough to change things when major corporations with virtually unlimited resources oppose reforms that cut off their gravy train.
But it can be done. Let’s take a look at just two so-called “impossible” wins in the struggle for equality in our country:
Abolition (1865)
In spite of the objections of mega-wealthy agricultural corporations, economists, religious leaders, historians, and eleven state legislatures, on December 6, 1865 the United States ratified the 13th amendment to the US Constitution, banning slavery. This win took over one hundred years and the bloodiest war in US history. The battle against racism – including institutionalized racism – is still very much alive, but at least slavery is illegal in the United States.
At the time, arguments against abolition were numerous. Experts said abolishing slavery would wreck the economy, creating widespread unemployment, uprisings and anarchy. Economists said abolition would destabilize the affluent slaveholding class and the free people who enjoyed the slave-based economy. Historians said that slavery was a natural state of mankind. Religious leaders noted that in the Bible, Abraham had slaves and Jesus himself never objected to slavery. Slavery was purported to be a “divine” institution, and even a great “opportunity” for people from Africa to have better lives.
How in the world could people think such things? Here’s how:
When a society forms around any institution, as the South did around slavery, it will formulate a set of arguments to support it. The Southerners held ever firmer to their arguments as the political tensions in the country drew us ever closer to the Civil War. The Southern Argument for Slavery
While we are not in any way comparing being uninsured to being enslaved, it’s interesting to see a similar process of justification about maintaining the status quo in health care. “If we get rid of the insurance companies, it will harm the economy and increase unemployment. It will destabilize our health care.” Others say that structuring health insurance so patients have “more skin in the game” is a great “opportunity,” because it will encourage smarter healthcare consumers. [The “skin,” BTW is your sky-high deductible and “the game” is your health.] Most ridiculous is the contention that expanding Medicare to All will dismantle the Affordable Care Act. This is baloney! It will build on the Affordable Care Act, and strengthen it.
Remember, for many years we had a policy called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which was supposed to protect closeted gay persons (but not openly gay persons) in the military. This repugnant measure was finally repealed in 2011. But can you imagine refusing to give real protections to gay people because we don’t want to displace “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? Let’s face it, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was NOT the destination!
In the same way, the Affordable Care Act should not be the destination. We’re not buying the BS about it and neither should you! We know if we eliminate the profit-gouging insurance companies, they will adapt. We know that a Medicare for All system will create new, better jobs for insurance industry employees! Jobs that will let them sleep well at night, because they will be helping – not hurting – people.
As for the affluent corporate class, should we worry about the jobs held by executives who made $66 million in 2014, like the CEO of United Healthcare? Nope. Guys like him are going to be just fine.
So how can we be so sure that Medicare for All won’t ruin the economy? Why are we so comfortable about tweaking the Affordable Care Act to achieve universal, high quality and truly affordable health care for everybody?
Because we can see real benefits from another “impossible” win, one that did not bring down the economy or anything else – except the mortality rate of Americans. We’re talking about a program that promoted healthcare equality and security for our parents and grandparents! What was it? (Drum roll, please!)
Medicare (1965)
Many people don’t realize that we got Medicare because a president was murdered. Yes, President Johnson won Medicare to honor our fallen president, John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy had fought hard for years to win Medicare against many powerful opponents, but in the middle of his struggle, he was assassinated in 1963. Johnson took up the battle in Kennedy’s name, and he won!
Kennedy faced off the American Medical Association (AMA) who said Medicare was “socialized” medicine. He challenged people who said that public health insurance would “sap the Pioneer stock” of Americans. He fought people who argued that health care wasn’t any of the government’s business.
Here are his responses to these arguments from a speech he gave on May 20, 1962 at a rally in New York:
Regarding the AMA, he said:
No one would become a doctor just as a business enterprise. It’s a long, laborious discipline . . . We want their help – and gradually we’re getting it. The problem, however, is more complicated because they do not comprehend what we are trying to do.
Wow! Even then, like today, the misinformation campaign was going strong! This is how corporations work, you know. They spend millions of dollars spreading lies to convince people – even intelligent people – that reality is not reality. Look at the NFL and concussions; Exxon and climate change; cigarette companies and lung cancer; Monsanto and GMOs. Don’t buy the hype! Medicare for All is not a communist plot.
Regarding sapping our pioneer stock, President Kennedy said:
And then I read that this bill [Medicare] will sap the individual self-reliance of Americans. I can’t imagine anything worse, or anything better, to sap someone’s self-reliance, than to be sick, alone, broke – or to have saved for a lifetime and put it out in a week, two weeks, a month, two months [on medical expenses].
You know what? Nothing will increase Americans’ self-reliance more than having a healthcare system that doesn’t depend on one’s job, that doesn’t sacrifice our health for corporate profits, that doesn’t leave us one illness away from bankruptcy! This is what Medicare for All will do for us, and that’s why HEAL California supports it and you should too!
Finally Kennedy’s response to the idea that healthcare isn’t government’s business:
This bill [Medicare] serves the public interest. It involves the Government because it involves the public welfare. The Constitution of the United States did not make the President or the Congress powerless. It gave them definite responsibilities to advance the general welfare, and that is what we’re attempting to do.
So now you see what’s in it for HEAL California and the millions of Americans who want to expand Medicare to everybody. We seek to advance the general welfare. We’re not making millions by denying people care. We’re not taking campaign contributions from banks, insurance corporations and Big Pharma lobbyists.
With hardly any money at all, we are fighting to win a healthcare system that will work for every single person in our country, without exception.
Join us! Add your voice to ours and make a difference for yourself and your family, for everyone’s family. Sign here!
Improved, Expanded Medicare for All is a fantastic solution to inequality in healthcare and no matter what you hear, it is achievable! Together we will win – for ourselves, for the children.
Learn more:
Secession in the United States
Improved Expanded Medicare for All
Unrealized Fear of Socialized Medicine