May 29, 2019
On Wednesday around 40 Medicare-for-All advocates rallied outside the Marines’ Memorial Theater in San Francisco where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was scheduled to address The Commonwealth Club.
The rally was coordinated by Single Payer Now and organizational participants included Physicians for a National Health Program, San Francisco Berniecrats and others.
June 1, 2019
Then, on Saturday June 1, an early-morning rally was organized outside the Moscone Center where the California Democratic Convention was being held.
The rally continued inside the center where Speaker Pelosi delivered a major speech about reproductive rights to the Women’s Caucus in light of abortion-restrictive legislation being introduced in states such as Alabama, Missouri, Georgia and Louisiana.
Jeanne Crawford, co-chair of the San Francisco Berniecrats Healthcare Committee, helped coordinate that effort, with participation by Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America, Single Payer Now and San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has opposed adding single payer to the Democratic Party platform for years. Recently, she implied that people may not understand what Medicare for All is.
On April 5, 2019, in an article titled “Nancy Pelosi urges caution on ‘Medicare for All,’ says Obamacare is best path to ‘quality, affordable’ health care,” Ashley Turner of CNBC reported:
...[Pelosi] believes when most people say they want Medicare for All, they really mean that they want health care for all.
The San Francisco protests were intended to highlight that the Speaker’s stated criticisms of Medicare for All have little public traction, and that we need her to support The Medicare for All Act of 2019 which would guarantee full access to care, control costs, and put a nail in the coffin of medical debt.
Speaker Pelosi’s objections to Medicare for All appear to lack a factual basis. She currently supports reforms that sometimes sound like Medicare for All, but leave insurance companies and Wall Street with the power to push the sickest among us into public programs while skimming healthier people into their for-profit products. Until she changes her position, Speaker Pelosi will continue to face protests critical of her resistance.
— Georgia Brewer for HEAL California
June 2, 2019
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HEAL California is an independent news and information hub focused on the California Medicare for All movement. We feature non-partisan news, views, podcasts and videos that highlight the continuing failures of our broken healthcare system and elevate the voices of advocates and organizations fighting for change.
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