Our national plans for 2024
2024 is an important election year, and nurses have a clear message for politicians: listen to your constituents, not the corporate health care industry!
We are in a health care crisis. It may not be receiving the coverage it deserves in the media, and it certainly isn’t receiving the attention it requires in Washington D.C., but it is a crisis nonetheless.
Just ask the 26 million people who have no health insurance. Or the 16 million people who have been disenrolled from Medicaid in the last year, 6.4 million of whom are children. Or take a look at GoFundMe on any given day, and see the heartbreaking stories of the quarter million people who start fundraising campaigns every year to try and cover medical debt. Last year this even included a world-famous Olympic athlete.
This is a problem that affects us all. Our health care system is fundamentally broken. The only people it works for are the health care corporations who make obscene profits off the backs of sick people and understaffed workers. If you don’t believe us, take a look at the most expensive property listed in Tennessee, just one of the many houses belonging to the billionaire owner of HCA, the largest for-profit hospital corporation in the world.
While most politicians ignore the reality of this crisis, nurses confront it everyday in their workplace. That is why, while working tirelessly to help and heal people, nurses are also working to help heal the broken system. And we know the solution: Medicare for All.
Union nurses are in lockstep with public opinion, while politicians are out of touch. Polling shows that people want Medicare for All. It is supported by 69% of the public. That soars to 88% when just looking Democratic Party voters. It even has 46% support among Republicans. This popular support is just not reflected in Washington D.C. There are currently 113 cosponsors for Medicare for All legislation in the House and 15 cosponsors in the Senate. Given the current political climate, having this level of support is something to be proud of and is clearly a result of our movement’s organizing. But if we want to win the transformational changes our country so desperately needs, we need to address the root issue: that our politicians are not prioritizing reform, in large part because of corporate influence on our democracy.
In this important election year, the Democratic Party has no serious legislative proposal on health care, much less the full throated support for Medicare for All that the majority of their voters need and want. And of course, the Republican Party is no better — health care justice is scarcely mentioned in Donald Trump’s horrifying procession towards the Republican nomination.
Why is this? Why are our elected leaders so out of line with the people who they are supposed to represent?
Fundamentally it comes down to money, as it so often does: many politicians are more beholden to the corporate health care corporations who bankroll their campaigns than to their own voters. That is why we got the Affordable Care Act, rather than single-payer health care, and it is why they have failed to act on the upswell of support for Medicare for All in recent years.
Health care industry money is distorting our democracy
Health care corporations in the US make huge profits. They use hundreds of millions of dollars of those profits to lobby politicians against reform, creating a feedback loop that has terrible effects on the rest of us. Take just one part of the health care industry: Big Pharma. Drug companies alone have nearly 1,800 lobbyists in DC — that is more than three lobbyists for every member of Congress. They have spent $8.5 billion on lobbying over the past 25 years, and given $700 million in campaign contributions in that same time. They donate to both parties, and their lobbyists include former leaders of both parties.
Why do these companies spend so much on lobbying? Because it’s a good investment. Buying politicians who then stand in the way of reform allows these companies to continue making massive amounts of money. Ten of the top pharma companies in the country made over $110 billion in profits in 2022. And the result? People in the US pay more for pain-relieving and life-saving drugs than any other country in the world.
Health care companies use their vast profits to distort our democracy. They help elect candidates who put profits over patients. They lobby aggressively against health care reforms. And when legislation is passed to challenge them, they sue the government.
In order to win Medicare for All, we need to drive a wedge between corporate health care and the people elected to represent us. We have to challenge and break the hold of corporate money over our politics.
Politicians think they can get away with it
The second challenge we face is that too often, our elected leaders don’t feel accountable to their voters.
Politicians know that health care is a critically important issue for people. They know that Medicare for All has broad support across the country, and deep support among their voters. But they think that it is not a key issue for people, the type of issue which determines how someone will actually cast their vote.
In order to make health care, and Medicare for All, an issue that cannot be ignored in this election, we need to show our elected leaders that there are huge numbers of people who see health care justice as their main, or one of their main, issues which determines whether they vote and who they vote for. We need to show them that supporting Medicare for All is not only the right thing to do, but the strategically correct thing to do: that it will win them votes.
Our strategy in 2024
Our organizing strategy for 2024 aims to answer these two challenges.
We want to shine a spotlight on the links between the corporate health care industry and politicians, and show how corporate money is blocking the change we need. By shining this light we hope to start to break up this cozy relationship.
While we weaken the power of the industry over politicians, we also need to strengthen the power of everyday people. We need to continue to build public support for Medicare for All, and we need to demonstrate the popular support that is already there.
In short, we need our elected leaders to hear our message: listen to your constituents, not the corporate health care industry.
To do this, we will lean into the strengths of our movement: the leadership of nurses as some of the most trusted people in our society, the willingness of everyday people to step up all over the country and take collective action, and the network of grassroots organizations who campaign tirelessly for health care justice.
Patients Over Profits
One way we will do this is by challenging the power of the health care industry through our Patients Over Profits pledge.
Thanks to our movement’s collective organizing, over 150 elected officials and candidates have already signed our pledge to not accept donations from the for-profit health care industry. By doing so, they are reducing the influence of the industry on our political system, and they are drawing attention to the outsized influence that still exists.
This effort has been people-powered, driven by volunteers all over the country who have researched, contacted, and challenged elected officials to step up.
But if this campaign is going to have the impact we want, it needs to get bigger, and we believe that 2024 is the year when that can happen. During the lead up to an election, politicians are more accessible and responsive to the public, attending events and trying to win support. With every new pledge signer, the power and reputation of the pledge increases. We need to take advantage of this moment to get the pledge in front of as many politicians as possible.
We have learned that candidates are particularly responsive to their own constituents, and even more so when engaged publicly at events. Therefore, over the coming months, we will work with local health care justice groups, and volunteers everywhere, to identify and contact politicians in their area — online, in person, and over the phone. We will support this work by sharing the tools, training and tips that we have seen to be successful elsewhere in this campaign.
With your help, we believe we can use this moment to send a powerful message to the health care industry: our elected leaders are not for sale.
Health Care Justice Voters
Additionally, we need to show our elected leaders that there is massive demand for health care justice now. We will do this by asking people in our communities their opinion about the current system and what is needed to fix it, and by asking them to demonstrate and make visible their support for action.
Nurses have been campaigning for health care reform for decades, but in recent years our campaign has emphasized canvassing as a core tactic to build our movement. We understand the power of direct person-to-person communication, of going out into our communities and speaking directly with our neighbors, our co-workers, and our family and friends about Medicare for All. We understand the power of exchanging our personal stories.
The Covid-19 pandemic meant we had to take a break from canvassing to keep each other safe, but in 2024 we will return to canvassing in a big way. Just as we want to cut out the middle-men in our health care system, we need to cut out the middle-men in our politics — the corporate media and industry spokespeople that peddle disinformation — and speak directly with people in our communities.
We will speak with our neighbors about the current broken health care system, we will let them know about our plan to fix it, and we will ask them to become ‘Health Care Justice Voters’ — in other words, pledge to consider health care justice as a top priority in their voting choices this election cycle.
If you want to organize a canvass, get in touch with us here.
We will provide all of the support, training and resources that you need to organize a canvass, but we need people who are willing to put their hand up and take responsibility for making local canvasses happen across the country.
Laying the groundwork for Medicare for All
We are under no illusions about the challenges of the current political moment. This year there is a lot on the line, and there is not an immediate path to enacting the action on health care that we all so desperately need. But there is crucial work we can do now to lay the groundwork that will bring about a different political context. We must use this moment to build the power of our movement. We need to continue to build public support for Medicare for All, and we must show our elected leaders that supporting Medicare for All is a popular stance that their voters want to see.
In the words of Medicare for All champion, Senator Bernie Sanders:
‘The struggle for Medicare for All will not be easy. We’re taking on the greed and power of the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry who make tens of billions a year profiting from this broken system. We’re taking on the massive amount of campaign contributions that go to politicians who defend their interests, as well as thousands of well-paid lobbyists who flood congressional offices.
Guaranteeing health care to all Americans as a human right would be a transformative moment for our country.
It would not only keep people healthier, happier and increase life expectancy, it would be a major step forward in creating a more vibrant democracy.’
Nurses have been leading the fight for health care justice for decades, and we will not give up until we win. We hope you will join us.
