Benjamin Day and Gillian Mason of Healthcare-NOW break down everything you need to know about the social movement to make healthcare a right in the United States. Medicare for All!
The national political media has been in a frenzy this week about friend-of-the-pod Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate primary victory in Michigan! Sayed made Medicare for All the centerpiece of his campaign, and at the polls, over 700,000 Michiganders got behind that vision of healthcare justice. But there’s another Medicare for All story unfolding in Michigan – the campaign to win a statewide universal…
When the U.S. Congress wants to get together, they don’t just check the shared Google calendar for a time when nobody’s using the House floor. Scheduling when or if a bill will ever get discussed or voted on is entirely up to the majority party. These days, that means that lawmakers outside the MAGAverse can’t do some pretty basic parts of their jobs like holding hearings. The Congressional…
Today we’re talking moral injury and how it’s impacting our doctors and the healthcare we get from them. What’s moral injury? Well, you may not have heard the term before, but trust us, if you’ve been watching The Pitt, you’ve already gotten a taste! Moral injury is the trauma that happens when someone knows the right thing to do but is prevented from doing it on a regular basis thanks to factors…
This episode, we’re live at the Texas Democratic Party Convention, where Gillian is battling heat stroke while talking with folks about why we need Medicare for All and how we’re using grassroots organizing to build the power to win it! In the past, Medicare for All might have been a tough sell in Texas, but things are very different these days, as the Lone Star state turns from red to a…
As we record this, the New York Knicks just might be poised to make history and win their first NBA championship since 1973 (Go Knicks!), but we’re here today to talk about a potential win that could be even bigger for New York than the Knicks taking it all… the passage of The New York Health Act! The New York Health Act, currently working its way through the NY state legislature, would guarantee…
The fight for our health is heating up this summer! Across the country, folks are getting ready for a summer of action to demand real justice in our healthcare system. At Healthcare NOW, we’re calling it No Surrender Summer, and it’s all kicking off with Seven Days in June, a national week of action against healthcare cuts. Seven Days In June was conceived by iconic activist Cleve Jones. Cleve is…
We usually stick to the healthcare news here, but this time, we’re covering a story happening right in our own backyard that could have huge public health consequences. Corpus Christi, Texas is about to be the first American city to run out of water, which threatens the health and wellbeing of the entire city, and especially the folks who are already in precarious health situations. Today we’re…
Content Warning: This episode is somehow even swearier than usual. War is hell. Mostly because it kills people indiscriminately and disrupts the lives of huge groups of people, but also because it costs so much money that could be spent on saving lives. Now, after a year of hearing that our country is so hard up for money that we need to make massive cuts to Medicaid and other public health…
It’s primary season, y’all! Today I’m joined by Abdul El Sayed — doctor, public health expert, and candidate for the Democratic party nomination in Michigan to talk about healthcare in this election and on the campaign trail! https://www.youtube.com/live/gYy53RAC8Zk?si=AtCEyUq8634waWlA To read more about Abdul and the race for US Senate in Michigan, you can check out his campaign page . You can…
Friends, I’ve got a question for you: how are you doing these days, mental-health-wise? Sometimes on the Medicare for All podcast we can get so busy edutaining about healthcare inequity that we forget to take a pause to check in and make sure we’re all OK. What’s that you say? You too are feeling a little… unwell these days? Us too! It’s an objectively terrible moment in history, we’re entering…
At Healthcare NOW, we’re used to getting push-back from folks who don’t believe in Medicare for All, and we always expect to hear from those folks – but this episode is about something different. When we announced our annual national Medicare for All Strategy Conference is happening this November, we got some push-back – not about our fight for healthcare justice, but about our choice of venue.…
Anyone who’s been on the internet and wants to preserve their sanity knows one, eternal truth: Don’t read the comments section. The comments, as we all know, are where our better angels go to die – where we forget our humanity and type out the ugliest, scariest stuff we were apparently thinking all along? Well, today, against our better judgement, we are going to disregard best practice and dig in…
:::CONTENT WARNING::: This episode contains graphic discussions of genocide. Here at the Medicare for All Podcast, we are usually focused on the US, but the fight for universal access to healthcare is one that stretches way beyond our borders. Today we take a global perspective and check in with a group of doctors who are putting their lives on the line to address the serious devastation happening…
We’re talking about Medicaid folks, the public healthcare system meant to be our social safety net for anyone who can’t afford private insurance and doesn’t have access to healthcare from an employer. I’m sure most of you are aware of Medicaid — but what you might not know is just how many of our friends and neighbors land in that safety net every year. Over 70 Million people in this country rely…
Whether you are a party planner or a community organizer, you know that since the pandemic, it has been REALLY hard to get folks out of the house. It makes sense: the news is depressing, our screen-based scrolling culture is alienating, and our politics are polarizing to the point where a casual conversation can easily escalate to throwing hands. That being said, this month has been different! In…
For this episode, we’re going back to a familiar villain from podcast-past because unfortunately, healthcare villains have a habit of staying relevant. This is a guy who made his fame by cozying up to Oprah while schilling diet pills, supplements, and medical conspiracy theories – it’s Doctor Oz, who is now Trump’s nominee for Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That’s…
Listeners, what were you doing in 2004? Perhaps you were strolling down the street in low rise jeans, Uggs, and a Livestrong bracelet listening to Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” Or maybe you were sitting in a movie theater ready to have your mind blown by Ashton Kutcher’s tour de force performance in The Butterfly Effect. Well, the folks joining us on this week’s episode of our podcast may have missed some…
Well, the voters have spoken, and despite all of our recommendations to the contrary, they seem to have voted for Trump. Yeah, we’re pretty sad/scared/pissed off/trying to cope by dissociating and stress eating as well. Regardless, once again, it’s Trump’s America and we’re just living (or dying) in it. We know from experience that a Trump presidency is bad for our health, but now he has a…
We spend a lot of time griping about the insidious power of corporate health insurance in our healthcare system here. But you would expect that taxpayer funded public programs for our most vulnerable friends and neighbors are free from profiteering right? Sadly, no. Medicaid - the public program that serves the lowest income Americans, plus some people with disabilities, and a lot of the country’s…
In case you’ve been asleep or under a rock for the past six months, we need to let you know two things: First, Kendrick won his beef with Drake, and second, there is a presidential election coming up. Like any presidential election year, everyone’s so focused on the big showdown at the top of the ticket, but that means that a lot of the local and state races, congressional races, and referenda…
The United States is unique among industrialized nations. Lucky for us, we can accumulate medical debt! Most industrialized and some developing nations have national healthcare programs that guarantee care to their residents. But we in the richest nation in the world have the freedom to get insurance through the free market, and go into debt when it doesn’t cover the care we need! USA USA USA!…
Usually on the Medicare for All Podcast, we talk about people who want healthcare but can’t get it, but today we’re talking about people getting healthcare they have specifically refused: folks who have been involuntarily committed. For plenty of our listeners, the idea of being held against your will at a psychiatric institution feels like a nightmare from another time – something out of gothic…
If there’s one thing everyone is talking about these days, it’s JD Vance’s affinity for couches. But if there are two things everyone is talking about, it’s Vance’s couches and Project 2025. You may be wondering, what is this mysterious project, and what does it have to do with me? Well, it turns out, a lot! Project 2025 is the right-wing map to a terrifying future, and if its proponents have…
It’s our 100th episode folks, and we are celebrating the only way we know how – by sharing our predictions of the grim, apocalyptic future that surely awaits us if we fail to get our healthcare system together! That’s right, we’re talking about the next pandemic, and if experts are right, it’s coming sooner than we think. In addition to several somewhat less familiar pathogens on the rise this…
It's the most wonderful time of the year! For activists in the movement to make Medicare for All a reality, this is the week when we gather to plot, scheme, and kvetch. Welcome to the 2024 Annual Medicare for All Strategy Conference, “Healthcare Beyond the Ballot Box,” organized by Healthcare NOW! For those of you who are attending the conference right now, you are getting a sneak preview of our…
We are in the middle of a resurgence of organized labor in the US. From Amazon workers to auto workers and grad students to baristas at Starbucks, everyone is getting in on the action! One of the big reasons workers are so hot to get that union card is because of… you guessed it, healthcare! Today we’re going to be talking union healthcare plans – how they work and how workers have managed to use…
The U.S. is wrestling with a massive mental health crisis - impacting young people in particular. Half of young adults and one-third of all adults report that they always feel anxious or have often felt anxiety in the past year. One-third of respondents could not get the mental health services they needed. Why? 80% say they couldn’t afford the cost and more than 60% said that shame and stigma kept…
We hear it over and over again – the private sector just does it better. Whether we’re talking education or healthcare or our criminal justice system, the default Republican (and sometimes Democratic) talking point is that competition in the marketplace allows the best ideas and best people (Elon Musk, lookin at you) to rise to the top and lead us to a utopian future (sponsored by Meta). But then…
Occasional fistfights aside, most of our legislators make the choice to use their words when they’re angry, and a lot of those words go into public letters they write to presidents, officials, and even each other. Despite the fact that no one else in this country has written or read a letter in decades, the public comment letter is still popular with politicians, who have elevated this obscure…
Here at the Medicare for All Podcast, we love calling out all the bad actors in our healthcare system – greedy insurance companies, soul-less CEOs in Big Pharma,profit-hungry “non-profit hospitals”, and all our favorite villains. Mostly, we look at the ways those predators target sick people and poor people for exploitation, but today we’re looking at what happens when they start fighting each…
Just this Monday, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day, a tribute to one of the great leaders of the movement for racial justice – but something that often gets forgotten in the flurry of MLK quotes that become memes this time of year is that equity in healthcare was a crucial part of King’s vision. Throughout his career in activism, he often stated his conviction that “Of all the forms of…
It’s that time again folks… time for a Mailbag Episode! We reached out to our whole audience and all our supporters to find the pressing questions on everyone’s mind. Or at least we would have if Gillian hadn’t been too busy eating turkey to email our list. So instead, Gillian reached out personally to some of our superfans (anyone in her contact list who had previously admitted to listening to…
Open enrollment. Deductible. Coinsurance. HMO. Indemnity plan. If you’re listening this far, you probably have a migraine already. Understanding the language of the health insurance industry, let alone selecting a health insurance plan, can be confusing, frustrating, and disheartening. But never fear - we are here to give you a crash course on everything you need to know about your insurance plan.…
If you’ve ever had an experience with the American healthcare system, you’ve probably walked away thinking, “Why can’t we have nice things? Or even basic human things??” We get stuck on gurneys sitting in ER hallways, waiting hours for care; we skip other basic needs like food and housing to pay for the healthcare we can’t skip; or we wait for months for preauthorizations from our health insurance…
Just over a month ago we lost Bob Barker, the man who taught us all about the brutal nature of capitalism one pricing game at a time. Now, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government is going to be playing a role in determining the prices for some of our favorite products. No, we’re not talking about cars or family vacations to the Bahamas – we’re talking about the prescription…
With all the threats facing our country – climate change, a predatory economy, corporations buying our elections, and the overt move towards fascism among the far right – you would think that politicians would be laser-focused on the existential crises descending upon us. But instead, politicians in the US are devoting a considerable amount of their energy these days to an all-out assault on the…
Almost every patient in America has had a frustrating experience in a hospital setting where we feel like we’re on a medical conveyor belt that moves WAY too slowly. We sit for too long in a waiting room; then our nurses or doctors speak with us very briefly; we might feel more like we’re filling out an online survey than we’re being listened to; then we might have more waiting; and then we’re…
Today we bring you behind the scenes into our office at Healthcare NOW. Just like the TV show The Office, we have our hijinks and wacky characters, including some very smart interns! They have prepped some of their burning questions for this episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnG1C8DOZVY First, from Intern Noah from Boston College: In your opinion, what is the most effective way to…
It’s summer, the sun is blazing, and we only have one thing on our minds - the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of the high-octane, expertly paced thriller The Fugitive, originally released August 6, 1993 starring Harrison Ford. Oh, and Medicare for All. We’re always thinking about Medicare for All. Now that we mention it, isn’t it funny how if we had a single-payer healthcare system, The Fugitive…
As Tom Petty taught us all in the 1980s, Waiting is the Hardest Part. That’s even more true when you’re waiting to see a doctor for a problem that needs attention. Anyone who has ever tried to secure a doctor’s appointment in this country knows that a) it’s going to be harder than scoring Taylor Swift tickets and b) you are going to face serious delays before you get your care. In this episode,…
Usually we spend our time on this podcast talking about our for-profit healthcare system and why we need to make healthcare a public good, but in this episode we’re taking a detour into another privatized American system that should be public: our railroads! Just like in US healthcare, private companies are falling asleep at the switch on managing our railroads, and just like in the healthcare…
Virtually all Americans know that our healthcare system is broken and that it’s working against us. But who is the villain in this story? Who is responsible for maintaining this healthcare system, and using it to profit off of patients? If we had to round up the usual suspects in a lineup, we’d probably end up with health insurance companies and big pharma. But what about hospitals? Many people…
If you missed our annual Single Payer Strategy Conference, it's your lucky day. Today we share a conference presentation all about the impact of Private Equity on healthcare (spoiler alert: it's not good.) Our guests are Eagan Kemp, Health Care Policy Advocate at Public Citizen; Rachel Madley, Health Policy Advisor to Medicare for All Act chief author Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA 7); and…
When kids turn two or three years old, they learn to tell what is called a “primary lie,” which is lying without much sophistication or awareness of how the listener will perceive the lie (hint: you completely failed to fool your parents). But when we turn four, we learn to tell “secondary lies,” which take into account the listener’s likely reaction, and are more plausible. When we turn seven or…
Back in 2008, the TV show Breaking Bad asked a question that is still on a lot of Americans’ minds: How far would you go to pay for medical care? In Breaking Bad, the main character ends up building a meth empire to pay for his cancer treatment, which is a solution we don’t necessarily endorse, but you do what you have to do. Today we’re going to be talking about real life (slightly less dramatic)…
2013 was a big year -- we had just survived 2012 (the year the Mayans thought the world was going to end), we were all doing the Harlem Shake on Vine, and -- most importantly -- our regular co-host Ben Day became the Executive Director of Healthcare NOW, the nation's leading Medicare for All advocacy organization. In this episode, Gillian interviews Ben about the past decade in the movement for…
Starting on May 11, President Biden is ENDING the emergency COVID-19 regulations that have been in place since the start of the pandemic in January 2020. These regulations created (almost) a Medicare for All-type public funding system for vaccines, testing, and COVID-related care. While the pandemic itself is still raging, the end of the official Public Health Emergency (PHE) means that access to…
Our guest today is Rebecca Wood. Rebecca lived all over Virginia before her relocation to Massachusetts. Rebecca worked with many organizations and offices on Capitol Hill. Her healthcare work includes rallies, protests, press conferences, and conventions. Most notable, she told her and daughter Charlie’s story at the introduction of Senator Sanders’ Medicare For All Act of 2017 and testified…
Like many of our episodes, this topic drives our hosts to use some salty language. Use your best judgment if you're listening near someone with tender ears. Hike up your trousers and throw on some long socks. We’re getting into the weeds on this one. Ben and Gillian discuss the digitization of our healthcare system and its far-reaching impacts on data privacy and patient health outcomes. We trace…
It’s a new year, which means everyone is coming out of the woodwork to make predictions about what’s in store for 2023. In this episode, we’re going to be making reckless, unverifiable claims about the future of the movement for healthcare justice, the public health crisis in this country, the political landscape, and yes – how an impending alien invasion might impact our fight for Medicare for…
