What’s next in the fight for Medicare for All?

The dire and urgent need for Medicare for All in the US is more clear now than ever before. Over a year into the pandemic, we have seen just how broken our health care system is at a time when we need it to be working best.

For nurses, the fight has become deeply personal. Nurses have long fought for Medicare for All on behalf of their patients and communities. But in the pandemic an unsettling truth has come to light: for too many hospital corporations, nurses are seen as expendable. Nurses can’t get the personal protective equipment (PPE) needed to keep themselves and their patients safe because hospitals continue to refuse to keep enough on hand — all in the name of keeping costs low and profits high. As a result, over 300 registered nurses have died from Covid-19 — deaths that were largely preventable. Simply put: even in a pandemic, profit is valued over nurses’ and patients’ lives.

And it’s not just the hospitals. During a global pandemic, you’d think health insurance corporations might be spending more and making less — but you’d be wrong. In fact, UnitedHealth Group had its most profitable quarter of all time last year. The CEOs of Cigna and Centene made $79 million (6x higher than the year before) and $59 million (1.5x higher than the year before), respectively, last year.

This was happening at a time when an estimated 27 million people in the U.S. were kicked off their employer-sponsored health insurance last year. When we needed people to be able see a health care provider the most, tens of millions could not. And let’s remember: this is on top of 29 million people who had no insurance and 41 million who were underinsured before the pandemic.

What’s more — the pandemic has exposed deep racial health disparities that have existed for decades. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are three times as likely to contract Covid-19 and twice as likely to die from it. Why is this the case? Systemic racism perpetuates in many different forms in our country, and one of the primary forms is our broken health care system. Communities of color are on average less likely to have health insurance, see a doctor regularly, and receive preventative care than their white counterparts. As a result, we see disproportionate poor health outcomes and pre-existing conditions among people of color.

We know that if we’d had a Medicare for All system in the U.S. that guarantees health care to all people free at the point of service, the pandemic would have played out a lot differently for millions of families. The good news is we’re fighting harder than ever for it. Over the past few years our nurse-led, grassroots-powered campaign — made up of all kinds of people, not just nurses — has been taken to a new level. Our fight isn’t slowing down in 2021. In fact, it’s more urgent than ever before, and we need your help.

So let’s talk about the path to win, what lies ahead for the rest of the year, and how you can get involved — no matter who you are or where you live in the country.

First — let’s recap what just happened last Wednesday in case you missed it.

Activists and organizers across the country have been working for months to help confirm their members of Congress as original cosponsors in the lead up to the highly anticipated re-introduction of the Medicare for All Act in Congress by author Rep. Pramila Jayapal. Organizing took place in hundreds of districts collectively with volunteers all over the country calling, emailing, and meeting with their representatives to ask them to sign onto the bill.

That work paid off: we saw the Medicare for All Act of 2021 (HR 1976) introduced last Wednesday with a record 112 original cosponsors (now at 114!). That’s more than half of all the Democrats in the House — which is huge.

Because of our collective work, this bill includes influential cosponsors like Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Jim McGovern, Budget Committee Chairman Rep. John Yarmuth, Education & Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott, Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, Oversight & Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler. Representatives who have never signed on before like Rep. Tony Cardenas and Rep. Ted Deutch are now original cosponsors because of years of organizing in their districts. Even the Chair of the powerful House Energy & Commerce Committee, Rep. Frank Pallone, has now signed on as an original cosponsor and has agreed to hold a hearing in his committee this year. This happened through our movement’s work and organizing.

It’s clear that this grassroots organizing is working, and that this is the work our movement must continue to do. 114 cosponsors is great, but it’s not enough support to win. If Medicare for All were given a floor vote in the House tomorrow, we’d lose.

That means our job as a movement is to keep organizing locally, district by district, to pressure more members of Congress — particularly the Democrats who still don’t support Medicare for All, and, most importantly, the ones who sit on key committees. To advance forward in the House, HR 1976 needs to have hearings, mark ups, and votes in the powerful Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means Committees, as well as the Budget, Rules, Armed Services, Oversight, Education & Labor, an Judiciary Committees. We need the chairs and members of those committees to at least feel enough pressure that they know they must not stand in our way — and at best even come over and join our side as active advocates.

We also need to continue to mobilize together at key moments, however the Covid-19 pandemic allows us to do. We have to continue to demonstrate the growing strength and size of our movement nationally, through coordinated national days of action like we’ve had over the last several years. Look out for more calls to action like this from us as the year goes on.

But today we are excited to share with you our plans for that district level work. Today, we’re publishing two lists of key members of Congress that will guide our work for the rest of the year.

First up, we’re announcing a list of 19 priority districts the movement is focusing on to increase the number of Medicare for All Congressional cosponsors. In these districts, we’ll be developing local campaigns led by volunteer leaders in the area to build and demonstrate public support and pressure their representative to sign on. Here’s that list:

If you live in one of these districts, we need your help. Sign up here to get plugged in.

Second, we’re relaunching our Patients Over Profits Campaign that first launched last year to break the influence that the hospital, insurance, and pharma corporations have on our members of Congress. The campaign is primarily focused on the Patients over Profits Pledge. This pledge asks that politicians refuse to accept donations from the corporations that make up the corporate front group, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, which is spending millions of dollars to prevent any health care reform from moving forward.

So this year, we’re focusing on some of the top recipients of this corporate cash in Congress. In these districts, we’ll also be building out local campaigns led by volunteer leaders in the area to draw attention to how much money these representatives are taking from these industries that profit off pain, misery, and illness in order to pressure them to sign the pledge. Here’s that list:

If you live in one of these districts, we need your help. Sign up here to get plugged in.

And if you’re curious about the donations that these members take or want to find out more about your own Rep, check out the Patients Over Profits tracker built by our friends at Healthcare-NOW!

To step up and get involved in any of these local campaigns, you don’t need to have any special skills or prior experience. All you need to do is bring is your commitment, and we’ll help you brainstorm how to take action, come up with a plan, and find other people in your district who will work with you. Again, to get involved just sign up here.

And if you live elsewhere in the country, we still need you involved. We’ve always got new calls to action and ways to plug in for every person, no matter where you live. Join our campaign here to stay in the loop. If you’re really ready to step up now, we’re looking for volunteers to host virtual text bank parties to help text voters in all the districts listed above. Sign up here to join a training call on how to host a text bank party.

There is no path to victory on Medicare for All that doesn’t involve organizing a powerful, grassroots movement of people. In this fight, we are up against one of the wealthiest industries in human history, and they’ll spend every dollar they have to stop us. We must offer what they will never have: people power. When enough of us come together to demand health care justice, there is little that can stand in our way.

And with a bill introduced, we have a new, concrete list of who in Congress is with us and who isn’t yet. Now we need your help to take action in your district.

We also need you to help spread this message about our strategy to augment and intensify the movement’s momentum. Please share this with friends, family, and other people you know. And if you haven’t yet, join us today to become part of a historic movement of millions of people from across the country, demanding that we finally guarantee health care as a human right to all.