by Dr. Ellen K. Halter
What is the issue that Americans are most concerned about? Universal health insurance! As Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, put it, “The time for Medicare-for-All has come.” Certainly, in America, the only western industrial country to not have universal health insurance, there is a growing crisis in health care. With the lowest life expectancy in the industrial world and the highest infant mortality, our health care costs are skyrocketing out of control. Thirty million Americans lack any health insurance while another forty million are under-insured.
This past February, our Congresswoman, Debbie Dingell, in conjunction with fellow US Representative Pramila Jayapal from the Seattle area, and 100 other co-sponsors introduced Medicare-for-All (H.R. 1384). In addition to the House bill, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has also introduced substantive single-payer legislation in the U.S. (Senate S. 1129). Both the House and Senate versions of the bill would provide health insurance for all Americans.
Non-profits advocating for universal health insurance are Social Security Works, the Center for Public Democracy, and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP).
Universal health insurance is at the center of the 2020 presidential campaign and is the issue many Americans care most about. Legislators in both the House of Representatives (Debbie Dingell and Pramilia Jayapal) and the Senate (Bernie Sanders) have proposed two different versions of Medicare-For-All. To read details of both bills, go to https://pnhp.org.