Winning Medicare for All Will Require Taking On Powerful Interests. Here’s How We Overcame One.


The American Medical Association’s decision to leave an industry-backed, anti-single payer group didn’t happen on its own. It was the result of dedicated organizing to make healthcare a human right.

BY CONNIE HUYNH
November 25, 2019

• [Full Text At Link]

The path to winning Medicare Care for All will be a case study of establishment forces doing all they can to detract, block and stave off progress.

With so many entities that profit immensely from our broken healthcare system, we will have to remove countless barriers along the way. The American Medical Association (AMA), a highly influential player in this debate, made a major move in August when it backed out of the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), the lead industry group created to ensure Medicare for All does not become a reality.

As the movement toward Medicare for All gains steam, with presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren touting the proposal on the campaign trail, the mounting threat to insurance companies and Big Pharma is becoming more and more clear. The end of private insurance, or at least most forms of it, stands as an existential threat to the future of these obscenely profitable corporations.

They should be scared. Close to a majority of Democrats in the U.S. House are now co-sponsoring Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Medicare for All bill. Healthcare has become a dominant issue in the 2020 Democratic primary. Medicare is one of the most popular programs in American history, and at a time when good jobs with guaranteed healthcare are hard to find, it makes sense that Americans want to expand it.

A Former Clinton Aide on Embracing the Sanders Movement

How the Trump years drove this one-time establishment insider to call for ‘nonviolent political revolution’

Peter Daou
Nov 26, 2019

http://gen.medium.com/a-former-clinton-aide-on-embracing-the-sanders-movement-31fcea5e04ea



[key excerpts - full post at link]

I have begun to question my core assumptions about politics and society, about the meaning of democracy in our dysfunctional two-party system, about the root causes of injustice and inequality.

The irony of my political journey is that my politics during the Bush-Cheney years put me squarely in sync with people like Paul Wellstone and Bernie Sanders. During the early part of the 2016 primary, I was excited by the Sanders campaign and praised him for raising issues like extreme inequality, which I had written about for years. But as the Democratic primary intensified, I hit back hard at any critique of Clinton’s character from right or left. And in the process I alienated many fellow progressives. I never used the term “Bernie Bro,” but I contributed to the narrative that Sanders supporters were all angry white males. I have apologized for that. I apologize here again. For the past two years, I’ve worked hard to build bridges to the Sanders supporters I fought with. And thankfully, they’ve reciprocated.

But my recent metamorphosis has gone beyond just expressing 2016 regrets or warming to Bernie Sanders after opposing him in the last election. I have begun to question my core assumptions about politics and society, about the meaning of democracy in our dysfunctional two-party system, about the root causes of injustice and inequality. I have been studying and learning more about neoliberalism, capitalism, and socialism to educate myself on the deeper structural issues that have led to obscene wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority.

Incremental change won’t result in meaningful long-term progress. Democrats winning occasional elections may lead to less draconian policies for a time. And that’s a good thing. But it is always two steps forward and three steps back. Theocrats, plutocrats, and white supremacists are ascendant, consolidating their grip on power.

So, for the 2020 race, I am aligned with the people-powered movement sparked by Sanders. His plan for a systemic overhaul, a fundamental restructuring of our approach to government, is the only viable path to meaningful progress in the United States. His voters have created a mass movement to do it, one that has attracted millions of young people — America’s future. I feel at home in it.

[full post at link]