California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro issued a joint public call to the Democratic Party Platform Committee meeting in Orlando to place support for an improved Medicare for All in the party platform.
NNU Policy Director Michael Lighty, a member of the platform committee and a member of the delegation of supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders to the committee, will introduce an amendment noting the “best way” to achieve the goal of universal, guaranteed healthcare “is through a Medicare-for-all health care system that builds upon the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and gives everyone in this country the freedom to get the medical care they need when they need it.”
A similar amendment was narrowly defeated on a 7-6 vote by the platform drafting committee meeting last month in St. Louis.
Prior to the opening of the platform committee meeting today, nurses and other single payer/Medicare for all advocates held a press conference to urge passage of the amendment. A recording of the press event may be viewed at nationalnursesunited.org/
In the joint letter, Newsom, who endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and DeMoro, a Sanders supporter, urged platform committee members to express their support for improved Medicare for all, noting the issue has the support of 81 percent of Democratic voters.
The platform committee and full Democratic National Convention, they wrote “should join America’s nurses, teachers, healthcare workers, public employees, stagehands, electrical workers, whose unions and the AFL-CIO have endorsed Medicare for All.”
The elements of Improved Medicare for All are:
• Everybody in, nobody out
• Enrollment is automatic
• State-based administration can bring more local control
• Provide a role for supplemental benefit programs
• Lower costs through single-payer leverage to control prices,
• Ends insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays
• Establish progressive financing
• Achieves universal healthcare
“Such an approach has two big advantages: it actually solves the problems Americans experience most, and simply put, is popular. Including the 81% of Democrats, 58% of all Americans support Medicare for All in a recent Gallup poll,” they wrote in their letter.
“It is true that every other industrialized country has figured this out. The reason healthcare costs so much in the US, is because prices are high. It takes the leverage and power of a ‘single-payer,’ like Medicare, to limit prices. We can get more, and pay less. Please join us by including support for Improved Medicare for All in the DNC Platform.”
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