By Rebecca Delay
The Progressive Magazine, Sept. 24, 2026

Across the country, candidates are running unapologetically on Medicare for All—and winning.

In just the last several months, three Democratic contenders for U.S. Senate seats clinched primary election wins after making Medicare for All a centerpiece of their campaigns. In Illinois, it was attorney and Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton; in Michigan, it was former public health director Abdul El-Sayed; and in Florida, the nod went to business woman and union organizer Angie Nixon, who, like El-Sayed, identifies as a democratic socialist.

It’s been a long time coming. As a policy and legislative specialist in health care reform, I’ve seen the evolution in public opinion and policy shifts up close. For decades, advocates of Medicare for All were told to wait our turn. We were told that single-payer health care was politically impossible.

That argument no longer holds true. The country is moving toward the position that physicians and patients have been advancing for years. We must seize this moment to enact real change.

Historically, the fight for universal health care in the United States has been defined as much by political skepticism as by policy disagreements. Even as the failures of the private insurance system have gotten harder to ignore, Washington has continued to focus on incremental changes, such as a public option, rather than comprehensive reform. While a public option could expand coverage for some individuals, it would leave the fundamental problems of the system intact.

Now the ground is shifting, and not just in electoral politics. In July, the Congressional Progressive Caucus convened physicians, nurses, patients, and policy experts for a shadow hearing on the future of universal health care. Even politicians such as Senator Ron Wyden, who spent decades advocating for incremental reforms, now openly acknowledge that the U.S. health care system is not just unaffordable, it’s become a public health crisis—so much so that the Senator recently released a comprehensive request for information on health care reform.

The nation’s health care failures are not solely abstract policy problems. They affect those delivering the care, as well as those receiving it. Physicians are struggling not simply because medicine has become more emotionally, physically or mentally demanding —medicine has always been that way. They are struggling because the system in which they practice is forcing them to choose between what their patients need and what an insurance company will approve.

A recent report by Physicians for a National Health Program found that nearly 70 percent of physicians “have left or considered leaving a position due to moral injury”—the psychological distress they experience when systemic or profit-driven barriers prevent them from providing optimal care. Those numbers should alarm anyone who has ever struggled to find a doctor, waited for a call back, or been jammed into a fifteen-minute appointment.

Every prior authorization that delays care. Every insurance denial that blocks a medically necessary procedure. Every patient who cannot afford a prescribed medication. Every physician who spends hours arguing with insurers. These are not isolated frustrations. They are the predictable consequences of a system designed to prioritize profits over patients.

That is where the political and professional movements for health care reform converge. Patients are experiencing the consequences of a fragmented system; physicians are asked to make decisions that conflict with their ethical obligations. The same system that makes care unaffordable for patients also makes practicing medicine unsustainable.

Medicare for All is not a cure-all, and transitioning to a single-payer system would require difficult decisions about financing, implementation, and the future of the health care workforce. These questions of implementation deserve serious debate. But they should not be confused with an argument for maintaining the status quo.

That is why the politics are changing. Americans are reaching the same conclusions that physicians have long understood: When financial incentives dictate medical decisions, patients pay the price. More Americans now recognize that the problems they experience are not isolated inconveniences but symptoms of a system whose incentives do not align with its stated purpose.

Whether that recognition leads to meaningful reform remains to be seen. But for the first time in a generation, the debate is no longer about whether fundamental change is imaginable. It is about whether we have the power to make that change.

This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

https://progressive.org…

By Whitney Curry Wimbish
The American Prospect, Sept. 21, 2026

Medicare for All is a winning policy supported by the vast majority of Democratic voters that can give the party a boost, including in battleground states, according to a new survey from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and her political action committee.

The Medicare for All PAC survey found that not only do 94 percent of Democratic voters support a universal public health insurance program, but so do a majority of moderate and independent voters. It also found that Medicare for All is a winning issue in battleground states, where Jayapal said progressives are constantly told to moderate their messaging on universal health care.

Overall, 60 percent of participants said they favored Medicare for All, up from 54 percent in a similar but not identical survey last year. Even in the more conservative battleground districts, support remained at 55 percent, “well ahead of partisanship in those districts,” Jayapal told reporters on a call last week.

Some candidates are taking this advice. In a critical toss-up House district in the Central Valley of California, Democrat Randy Villegas is running on Medicare for All as his biggest legislative priority. And in the presidential swing state of Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed rose on the strength of a Medicare for All pitch to win his primary election despite over $60 million in outside super PAC attacks, and polling shows him ahead in the general election.

Democratic pollster Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted the survey on behalf of Medicare for All PAC in August, querying 1,200 likely 2026 voters. Medicare for All PAC has so far spent $2 million in this election cycle alone backing candidates who support the policy, Jayapal said, adding that she plans to push for a markup in the next Congress of the Medicare for All bill that she, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sponsored.

The new polling comes as President Trump’s policies have kicked millions of Americans off of health insurance and raised costs for those who have managed to hang onto insurance, both private and public. His One Big Beautiful Bill Act law ripped $1 trillion out of Medicaid to pay for permanent tax cuts for the richest Americans and corporations, a policy choice that is expected to disenroll five million to ten million people by 2028, according to an analysis this spring by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute. A more recent analysis found that 2.3 million young adults could lose Medicaid under the cuts.

Rising pharmaceutical use and astronomical list prices are also straining Medicare costs. And the end of enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act exchanges has spiked insurance premiums and made coverage too expensive for millions more.

Employer-funded health insurance is expected to rise, too, because insurance companies are maintaining their profit margins by shifting the cost of the lost Medicare money to that group of patients. In 2027, premiums are expected to cost more than $19,000 per worker, an increase of 9.5 percent from this year, Healthcare Dive reported last month, and half of employers plan to pass more of that cost on to workers. Many are outright dropping health benefits.

These policy choices will increase the overall share of uninsured Americans, which in 2025 was about 26.7 million people, or 7.9 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau on Tuesday. In May, the National Center for Health Statistics put that figure at 28 million, or about 8.3 percent.

Trump’s cuts are reducing the number of places people can get health care even when they can afford it. As of Wednesday, Protect Our Care had tallied 614 hospitals that have closed wards or shuttered completely and another 613 at risk of doing the same. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most of these hospitals are in urban areas, as the Prospect reported in July.

At the same time, Trump’s pro-disease health secretary, RFK Jr., has made the entire nation sicker, including through his anti-vaccination crusade, which has caused 3,294 confirmed measles cases as of September 11, an increase of 1,000 over all of the cases last year. His Centers for Disease Control records no measles deaths for the year, a lie of omission. Four people have died from measles in Pennsylvania, including two infants.

Anger and fear over physical safety in America is unmissable, Rep. Jayapal told reporters, and fewer people are buying old talking points about how Medicare for All is impossible because it’s too expensive and will raise taxes.

“These arguments simply don’t work anymore because they have seen their health care collapse, their premiums increase dramatically, and their levels of medical debts soar,” Jayapal said. “The unpopularity of and anger towards the current system shows up in the poll again and again.”

A statistic from the poll buttresses that point: 70 percent of respondents criticized for-profit insurance companies, eight percentage points more than polling found just months ago. Even more—73 percent—had a negative view of prescription drug companies.

The survey captured the financial reality Americans face because of health care costs. One in three spend more than $500 monthly on health care, up 25 percent from last year. One in four carry medical debt above $1,000; that group of voters is 68 percent in support of Medicare for All. It also showed that Americans frequently can’t get care even if they could pay for it. Thirty-eight percent overall have been denied coverage by their plans; people of color specifically face an even higher rate of denial, at 46 percent. Seventy-one percent of voters who have been denied treatment support the policy.

“Moreover, among low-propensity voters—the kind of voters who sometimes skip midterms and often believe the outcome of elections do not make much of a difference in their lives—support reaches 66 percent,” the survey findings report says.

The survey found that Democratic candidates who support Medicare for All do just as well, if not better, than candidates who do not support it, even in conservative-leaning battleground districts. And when the parties are stripped out completely, the pro–Medicare for All candidate wins by 14 points.

Universal health care will be decisive in 2028, the survey says. “The Democratic base has coalesced behind this issue,” the report says. “It is hard to find an issue outside of abortion and hatred for Trump where 94 percent of Democrats come to the same conclusion.”

Jayapal described on the call messaging that has resonated with voters, including that the current system is too expensive, denies people care, and serves to enrich for-profit insurance and drug companies “while we get sicker and poorer.” Medicare for All offers freedom to shift jobs, avoid debt and surprise bills, and allows doctors to focus on patient care.

“At the end of the day,” she said, “Medicare for All is no longer a fringe issue.”

https://prospect.org…

By Kay Tillow
Common Dreams, Sept. 19, 2026

After a century of providing healthcare to this rural, southeast Michigan community, Sturgis Hospital closed in June with only 70 hours warning.

The hospital was not on the at-risk-of-closing list that had been published by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) a year earlier.

Over 300 Sturgis Hospital employees are scrambling to find work. Registered nurse Beth Kelley, who had worked at Sturgis for 32 years, described the meeting room as filled with “shock” and “devastation” when management announced that the hospital was closing.

The termination of care at Sturgis Hospital overloads the city’s emergency medical services. Director of public safety Ryan Banaszak said, “What was once approximately a 2-mile transport for patients has now become closer to 25 miles, which takes ambulance personnel and equipment out of service for a much longer period of time.”

The impact is great on Michigan Medicaid patients, who cannot use the closest hospital because it is across the state line in Indiana.

“Rural hospital closures lead to significant increases in mortality, and birthing outcomes and obstetric care suffer following closures,” said Michael Shepherd, University of Michigan health policy researcher. The risk increases with every additional mile for emergencies like strokes and heart attacks.

A few weeks later the rural River District Hospital in St. Clair County northeast of Detroit announced the closing of its inpatient and emergency services. Four more rural Michigan hospitals—in Mt. Pleasant, Carson City, Ontonagon, and Dowagiac—are in danger of closing with the upcoming Medicaid cuts.

Rural Americans live sicker and die younger than those in urban areas. Life expectancy is about three years shorter in rural communities. When a rural hospital closes, the mortality rate rises by 5.9%. Rural hospital closures increase mortality for emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes by about 10%.

“There are two kinds of Americans: those who live 12 minutes from an emergency department and those who live 72,” writes Ayla Ellison who grew up in Carmi in southern Illinois. “Whether you survive a heart attack, deliver a healthy baby, or die from something entirely treatable increasingly depends not on the severity of your illness, but on the distance to the nearest hospital,” she continues. She explores the consequences of rural hospitals folding in a country where no one is responsible for assuring help is close enough for a chance at life. The hospital in Carmi closed 20 years ago. Nine more Illinois hospitals are at risk of closure, most of them in southern Illinois.

Other states are worse off. In Mississippi, 51% of the rural hospitals are at risk of closing; in Alabama, 52%; in Arkansas, 68%.

Dr. Kenneth Williams battled for decades to sustain the hospital (Alliance Healthcare System) in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Rapid expansion of Medicare Advantage plans reduced reimbursement and increased denials of payment to the hospital. In 2023, facing financial desperation, the hospital converted to Rural Emergency Hospital status, a federal program designed to stabilize struggling rural hospitals. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) later removed that designation, leaving the hospital again fighting to stay open.

Nationwide more than 700 rural hospitals are at risk of closing, over half at immediate risk within the next two to three years. The 700 hospitals represent about one-third of all rural hospitals. That report was prior to the passage of HR 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that slashes $1 trillion from Medicaid. The crisis escalates from grim to disastrous with the looming Medicaid cuts.

Federal efforts to save our rural hospitals have been pitifully inadequate in the face of the towering problem.

Critical Access Hospitals, created by Congress in 1997, allow small rural hospitals to receive cost-based Medicare reimbursement. The plan was designed to stem the tide of closures.

Between 2010 and 2025, 152 rural hospitals closed. Of these, 52 were Critical Access Hospitals.

In 2021 Congress created Rural Emergency Hospitals. This designation provides for enhanced Medicare payments allowing rural hospitals to continue with outpatient and emergency services only, instead of closing.

In 2023, Sturgis hospital was “saved” by conversion to a Rural Emergency Hospital, delaying its shutdown by three years.

Neither these nor any other federal plans are big enough or thorough enough to work.

CMS Director Mehmet Oz recently visited Kentucky, home of 35 rural at-risk hospitals. He touted the $50 billion in Rural Health Transformation Funds as the solution. The assertion is absurd.

At best, Kentucky will get $1 billion from the rural transformation funds as it loses $21 billion in Medicaid funds. Not even a wizard can turn that into a winner.

As Boston University professor Alan Sager notes, no US entity is responsible for sustaining or building or financing hospitals based on community need.

“The whole Appalachian area has been abandoned, but its hospitals should be funded and improved, as a necessity of life—like the post office,” says Dare Cima, who is from southeastern Kentucky.

With passage of H R 3069, Improved Medicare for All, finally, the nation will take responsibility for assuring that rural areas have adequate facilities. Hospitals will be paid quarterly, in advance, with a global budget that provides operating expenses.

The allocation to hospitals ensures proper staffing with safe nurse-to-patient ratios and optimal staffing for physicians and other healthcare workers. Physician salaries can be included in the global budget. Adjustments to the operating budget will be made “to decrease healthcare disparities in rural or medically underserved areas.”

Special projects funds will be used to end discrimination based on race or other underserved categories including geography. Funds will be allocated for construction of new facilities where needed. At long last, the nation’s healthcare plan will guarantee that not only is everyone covered for care, free at the point of service, but that there is a place within reasonable distance to find that care.

The late Dr. Ewell Scott, Medical Staff president of St. Clair Regional Medical Center in Morehead in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, predicted that if current policy continued, it was just a matter of time until all of Kentucky’s hospitals east of I-75 would be closed.

Sadly, that prediction is breathtakingly close as 16 of east Kentucky’s hospitals in the 5th Congressional District, including Dr. Scott’s beloved St. Clair hospital, are on the list of those endangered with closing by the passage of HR 1.

But Dr. Scott was fighting for a different future. He persuaded the City of Morehead to pass a resolution supporting Improved Medicare for All, a national single-payer plan that would cover us all and fund the hospitals.

Dr. Scott urged all who would listen to tell their congresspersons: “We know the solution. You’ve got to have the guts to stand up and do it.”

https://commondreams.org…