SPANWV News

Reserve your free ticket for The American Conversation Series: Healthcare- The Issue of Our Time on March 12, 6:30pm, at the Frank Center Theater. Single-payer proponent, Richard Master, of Businesses for Medicare for All, is on the panel. He produced the film Fix It: Healthcare at the Tipping Point.

The Urban Institute’s (UI) new analyses of the costs of a single-payer reform, along with other reform options, posits impossibly large increases in the utilization of medical care (ignoring real world experience with coverage expansions in the U.S.), and discounts the vast administrative savings achieved by single payer systems in other nations, and by the U.S. Medicare program. …

… [A]s Democrats have realized how well the phrase “Medicare For All” polls with voters, its meaning has been deliberately muddied. Most of the Democratic presidential candidates now support something they call “Medicare For All,” but it’s often not clear what they mean by it. Some, when they clarify specifics, make it clear that what they actually want is a “public option,” i.e. a new kind of government insurance plan that you can buy within the structure of the existing healthcare marketplace. …

House Budget Committee announces hearing on single-payer health care: The House Budget Committee on Friday announced that it will hold a hearing on single-payer health care on May 22, marking another step forward for the progressive proposal on Capitol Hill. Read more…from The Hill by Peter Sullivan – 05/10/19

Rep. Jayapal, who introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2019 (HR 1384), is asking for letters from us documenting the need for Medicare for All. Why? She will submit them as testimony at the first-ever hearings on national improved Medicare for all that will be held by the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 at 10:00 am.

Come to Washington, DC! Join members of EPSPAN and other single-payer advocates in DC on April 17. We will visit all of the Congressional offices to drop off materials and also gather contact information for all of the Health Legislative Assistants for the Single Payer Educator project. And more news on the movement.