Universal Health Care In the Senate!
Big news in the fight for Single-Payer / Expanded and Improved Medicare for All!
Sen. Ed Markey (D, MA) has agreed to introduce the Senate companion bill to Rep. Khanna's (D, CA) H.R. 6270 "State-Based Universal Health Care Act" (SBUHCA) as soon as next week. We need to recruit our Senators in the next few days, with a cutoff deadline of Tuesday 2 April, 5pm ET, for original (pre-publication) co-sponsoring Senators to sign on.
Please call the Capitol Hill switchboard at 202-224-3121 now and urge both of your Senators to co-sponsor SBUHCA. Emails, portal messages, and social media posts are also powerful. And keep an eye out for our national petition that is circulating with 82 state and national partners on the Action Network platform (more to come on that front over the coming weeks).
If this SBUHCA breakthrough was not enough, Senator Markey will be hosting the first-ever hearing on the SBUHCA bill (and refresh discussion on the Green New Deal Health Act [GNDHA]) in Boston, April 3rd, 11am-2pm ET. Sen. Markey will be leveraging his chair position on Primary Health and Retirement Security Subcommittee (part of Sen Sanders' HELP -- Health, Education, Labor, Pensions -- Committee) to highlight the deepening financial crisis of the private equity firm Steward Health Care System, and the existential threat it poses to several Boston-area hospitals.*
We all know that the Solution to this Crisis -- and a fundamental linchpin for addressing so many more crises -- is restored, enhanced and expanded Medicare for All. In this case, 'Medicare for All through state and regional plans' is not only the most politically viable path forward, given the array of medical-industry power assembled here in Washington, D.C. (where I live, learn and lobby), but it will provide the best model for the national Single-Payer system that constitutes the gold standard for healthcare justice in the United States.
Thanks for doing everything you do, and more. We. Are. Winning.
Yours in radical hope and strategic action,
Chuck
Chuck Pennacchio, Ph.D.
President, One Payer States
