Heal This Sick Country: ‘Hands Up’ for the National Day of Action for Single Payer, Common Dreams, April 27, 2025, by Judy Albert, Ed Grystar, Ana Malinow, Kay Tillow, and Claire M. Cohen
Event details provided HERE. Scroll down a little to “Find an Action” or click HERE.
Today, we call on people across the country to gather on May 31, 2025, to put their “Hands Up” for:
- The recognition by our government that healthcare is a human right;
- The elimination of private health insurance and the banning of for-profit delivery of care;
- The enactment of a publicly financed, national single-payer program that would provide comprehensive coverage to everyone; and
- The transformation of care delivery from profit-seeking ventures into services organized to serve the people of our country, a system in which all caregivers are freed from corporate control.
President Donald Trump’s inauguration has introduced the prospect of severe hardships to working class and low-income people, people with disabilities, the elderly, and children with proposed cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security necessary to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. This moment demands more than the protection of our public programs; it demands a national, single-payer healthcare program, free from profit, for everyone. One people, one plan.
The complicity of our government in the profit-making enterprise of health insurance has been exposed once again when, on Monday April 7, the Trump administration raised payment rates for Medicare Advantage insurers by 5.1%, significantly more than the Biden administration’s proposed increase of 2.2%, which was bad enough. This rate increase has the potential to increase payments to MA by $25 billion next year.
[ see article for more examples of how our insurance approach increasingly places profits over health care ]
Comment:
By Jim Kahn, M.D., M.P.H.
This imminent national event is exciting!
Popular demand is an essential element of achieving single payer – the desperately needed transformation of how we pay for health care. Single payer / Medicare for All places people over profits, annually saving hundreds of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars (as HJM has often reported). What decreases is hassle, administrative waste, and profits for payer intermediaries.
The path to single pay is, we have found over decades, very difficult. We must redouble our efforts.
Express your demands for health care justice on Saturday! Spread the word!
See links above to find out more.
https://healthjusticemonitor.org…
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