Podcasts about healthcare now

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 of that stuff because they were too busy building a movement for healthcare justice! 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of Healthcare NOW, the national organization fighting for Medicare for All that brings you your favorite podcast! If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I was the Executive Director of Healthcare NOW for 11 years, and Gillian is the current Executive Director, but today we're taking it back to 2004 and talking with some of the OGs who started it all! This episode features some of our very favorite people -- the leaders in the healthcare justice movement who have made Healthcare NOW what it is today (the creator of your favorite podcast content!): Mark Dudzic is a longtime union organizer and activist.  He served as national organizer of the Labor Party from 2003 to 2007 and was a cofounder of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer in 2009.  He has been a member of the Healthcare Now board since its founding in 2004. Lindy Hern is the Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and President of the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology. She has been on the Healthcare NOW board since 2009 and is the author of “Single Payer Healthcare Reform: Grassroots Mobilization and the Turn Against Establishment Politics in the Medicare for All Movement."  Donna Smith is an advocate for single payer, improved and expanded Medicare for all. Her journalism career included work as a stringer for NEWSWEEK magazine, editing and reporting for the Black Hills Pioneer in South Dakota, as well as appearances on CNN and Bill Moyers Journal, and as one of the subjects in Michael Moore's 2007 film, SiCKO. She worked for National Nurses United and traveled more than 250,000 miles advocating for health justice. She now serves as the National Advisory Board chair for Progressive Democrats of America. Walter Tsou is a Board Advisor to Physicians for a National Health Program and on the Board of HCN.  He has been a long time single payer healthcare activist.  Walter is a former Health Commissioner of Philadelphia and Past President of the American Public Health Association. Cindy Young has been a healthcare activist for over 40 years. She has served on the Health Care Now board since 2012. In her retirement, she serves as a Vice President for the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA), whose principle goal is to establish a single payer system in California. If this episode doesn't give you your fill of Healthcare NOW history, you can always check out Lindy's book or this sweet tribute to our founder Marilyn Clement. And of course, if you want to keep up the good work of all these amazing folks, you can make a donation to support our work!

Please donate to the show!In the first episode of our new season, we kick off a series on healthcare by discussing the Luigi Mangione incident and the public's response. We delve into the critical work of Healthcare Now, reflect on the Trump administration's influence on healthcare goals, and explore how potential changes to Medicare could reshape the conversation around Medicare for All.This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 6 episode 1. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.You're listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it's so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.To stay informed:* Subscribe to our YouTube channel* Subscribe to the podcast (https://incorruptible-mass.buzzsprout.com)* Sign up to get updates at https://www.incorruptiblemass.org/podcast* Donate to the show at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/impodcast

Dr. Jay Anders, Chief Medical Officer of Medicomp Systems, shares his career transition from an internist to a leader in healthcare IT, emphasizing the importance of usable technology for clinicians. He discusses Medicomp's mission to enhance clinicians' efficiency and patient care through advanced tools. Dr. Anders also explores the challenges of incorporating AI in healthcare, the disparity of healthcare access in rural areas, and the rewarding experience of international medical missions. He highlights the importance of change management in reducing physician burnout and aims to teach coping mechanisms for managing constant healthcare changes.   Guest links: www.medicomp.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayandersmd/ Charity supported: Feeding America Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com.  PRODUCTION CREDITS Host: Lindsey Dinneen Editing: Marketing Wise Producer: Velentium   EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode 042 - Dr. Jay Anders [00:00:00] Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world. [00:00:09] Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them. [00:00:15] Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives. [00:00:28] Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives. [00:00:38] Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives. [00:00:42] Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference. Hello, and welcome back to The Leading Difference podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Dr. Jay Anders. As Chief Medical Officer of Medicomp Systems, Dr. Anders supports product development, serving as a representative and voice for the physician and healthcare community. He is a fervent advocate for finding ways to make technology an enabler for clinicians rather than a hindrance. Dr. Anders spearheads Medicomp's knowledge based team and clinical advisory board, working closely with doctors and nurses to ensure that all Medicomp products are developed based on user needs and preferences to enhance usability. As the host of a popular, award winning Healthcare NOW radio podcast, "Tell Me Where IT Hurts," Dr. Anders has discussed the topics of physician burnout, EHR clinical usability, healthcare data interoperability, and the evolving role of technology in healthcare with a variety of industry experts and pundits. Well, hello, Jay. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited you're here. [00:01:53] Jay Anders: I'm very glad to be here. [00:01:54] Lindsey Dinneen: Excellent. Well, I would love if you wouldn't mind starting off by telling us just a little bit about who you are and your background and maybe what led you into MedTech. [00:02:06] Jay Anders: Well, I am an internist by training, and after practicing medicine in a large multi specialty group practice for almost 20 years, I decided to have a little career shift, and the reason I shifted careers was I had a little computer science background, so I said, "Let's see if we can put that to work." And about that time is 2004, I'll date myself. We started getting into electronic health records, and when they first started to come out, they were just these read only, do nothings, electronic versions of paper. And I thought, "Well, this is not going to work out really well. Let's see what we can do about that." So my big clinic decided we'd be one of the first to hop in the pool. So we did with a company called Integrate. And when we got that all installed and rolled out and everybody using it, they came to me and said, we really need a physician to really help lead what do physicians want or need in healthcare IT. So I said, "Well, we'll just part time." Well, that lasted about six months. And I said, "I can't be in two places at once. I can't practice full time medicine and do this at the same time." So I switched careers and one of the biggest questions I get asked all the time is "Why in the world you do that?" I mean, I saw, you know, five, six thousand patients a year, big practice. And they said, "Why'd you get out of practice?" And I said, "Well, think about it for a minute. So I can see those five or six thousand patients and affect their lives and help their health get better, or in this industry, I can make the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients better. And not only them, the providers that actually take care of them." So to make a really long pathway short, that company got purchased by another company, which got purchased by a company, probably everybody knows called McKesson. And I worked in the big corporate medicine world for a while. I got kind of tired of that. And I wound up with working with Medicomp. We use some of their products and the Integrate product that we had. So I've known him for quite some time and he always told me, he said, "When you're ready to make a change, let me know." So I was ready to make a change and I joined Medicomp. It's now been 11 years working at that particular organization. Love it. It's great. And it's got the right mission. So I was looking for where can I really make a difference? And this company really makes a difference. [00:04:36] Lindsey Dinneen: That's incredible. Thank you for sharing a little bit about your background. And I'd really love to dive into exactly what you ended with because I think that mission is such a key aspect of maybe a lot of things, and probably opinions vary, but I have found that it is really helpful to have something that drives you so that on the difficult days you go, "Yes, but I am here for this reason." So I'm curious, can you expand a little bit about your current company and how it is so missionally driven? [00:05:08] Jay Anders: Well, Medicomp has a single purpose that has multi facts blended into it. How can I say that a little bit better? It's just, it's got a lot of tentacles, but it does one thing. It was started to actually assist the providers at the point of care to actually take care of their patients. It started out 46 years ago. We're one of the oldest healthcare IT companies out there. We're older than Epic. I love to say that. So we started out to how do you really assist clinicians to, to do what they do. And through multiple iterations and years of development and things like that, we have come up with a set of tools that I think really puts the joy back in the practice of medicine for the providers that have to do it. It also has a mechanism to get the patients involved. So my goal when I first started this is, when I first started looking at electronic health records, I said, "This is not going to work," like I said before. And that's what we're doing now. We're making it work. And it's interesting to see the acceptance or push back, however you want to talk about it. But we have but one mission: is to make the lives of the clinicians that use electronic healthcare work for them. [00:06:29] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, absolutely. My mind immediately goes to perhaps some of the challenges that the company faces with these electronic records, things like cybersecurity and HIPAA. And I'm so curious to know how you have been able to navigate that and adapt and evolve because, oh dear, those are hot topics. [00:06:51] Jay Anders: Well, yeah, in healthcare, it's probably one of the most regulated things on the planet at least in the United States. And it just got a little bit more complex because the Office of the National Coordinator keeps rolling out more regulations which we have to comply with. It's interesting how Some of these regulations have morphed throughout the process. I'll take HIPAA as an example. You brought it up. The privacy act had a very simple mission is to protect people's medical records from being shared with the wrong people. It went completely over the falls, meaning you can't share anything. And it's really tough to get permissions and all of that. One of the problems we've had that my company helps solve because we're in the exchange information business is being able to share that medical information when it's needed and where it's needed and in a format that's usable. So when people say, "I don't want my medical record shared," it's interesting because if you really ask patients, they say, "Oh yeah, if my doctor who is in the next town needs what I have, wrong with me, send it. I don't want to have to fill it out again." And one of the biggest bugaboos that I've seen with patients, including myself, is that every time you go to the doctor now, they ask you the same set of questions over and over again. Has that information changed? Probably not all that much. So it spends a lot of time going through machinations of making sure everything is okay and shareable and all of that. I have noticed that lately things are starting to loosen up a little bit along those lines. So people are not so scared that their information is going to get in the right hands or wrong hands, needs to be in the right hands. So I see that kind of fading in, in the United States. And what's interesting is our company is international. So we have installations in Thailand and Indonesia and other places. And over there, there's no problem with sharing information, which is a big plus when it comes to really taking care of patients, and that's why we're in this business as a clinician, either on the healthcare IT side like I am now or on the other side before. It's all about taking care of the patient. [00:09:10] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and it's cool to think how you have been one of the first providers of such a service because that must have been, I feel like a barrier of entry would have been challenging. What kind of pain points did you have to solve for, especially clinicians who might have been hesitant to adopt the technology? [00:09:31] Jay Anders: Good question. One of the biggest challenges was the breadth of medicine itself. If you think about all the different conditions that a human can have, you have to have support for all of it. Well, getting to the all of it has taken 46 years. So it's not as if it happened yesterday. So the challenge was actually making it work every time, all the time, for the breadth of medicine. Now, one of the things about physicians especially, nursing not so much, but physicians particularly. We all know that we know everything on the planet and we are the absolute arbiter of everything you have as a patient, and we don't need any help at all. We can handle it. We're trained that way, which is really not true. Even in the old days, I would dismiss myself from a patient's room because I knew I had to go look something up. My knowledge is a little diminished in that area, so I have to go look it up. Well now, medicine's expanded so much that there's no way on the earth you can keep track of it all in your head. So, what can keep track of vast amounts of information, both patient information as well as medical information, pretty easily? A computer! So how can we make that computer act and think like a clinician. And that's what we've done at Medicomp. We've actually done that process. So when you walk in with diabetes or whatever condition, I can give you on a screen everything you need to ask and answer about that particular condition and make it easy for you to take care of that patient and document what you need to document and get all the information you need and sort it out. So computers can do that. It's gotten better through time, and now we have the world of AI we have to deal with in healthcare, which is also a little scary, but it does have a great potential. [00:11:34] Lindsey Dinneen: Well, and to that point, to explore it a little further, what is your opinion of incorporating it? How do you feel that the safety or ethical implications of it, I think there's always a lot of great uses for AI, but I'm curious about how do you feel that maybe it would be best utilized for situations like yours or for companies like yours? [00:11:57] Jay Anders: Well, AI is nothing more than a large program that's trying to predict what the next word will be in any given text. That's what it does, basically, down to the ground. The issues with AI is it's not trained as a clinician. You can read it every medical text on the planet, but it still does not really think like a physician thinks. So, along those lines, it's a great augmentation, easy retrieval of data, easy refreshing your memory about something if it's a little esoteric. It's great at that. It's also great at picking up synonymy, which is picking up every different medical term that you try to use in a particular situation. It can do that very well. The issue is it's not trained medically and it really doesn't have the intuition of a well trained physician So I'll tell you a little bit about myself again. When I started as an intern, I had a white coat with every conceivable little pocket manual I could stuff in it, including my stethoscope and tongue depressors and lights and things like that. I passed all my boards. I knew medical text. I knew all that. But it came down, I have to take care of patients now. A little different. And the experience that I developed over 20 years of doing that is something that you really can't stick into a computer. So, I think AI is going to be great about summarizing different sets of information, filtering it, presenting it, doing things like that. I don't think it's going to be used a whole lot to actually diagnose patients. I've seen people try to do that. It scares me a little bit. The other issue is, who's responsible? If a computer makes a diagnosis, who in the world is responsible? It's not the computer, it didn't care less. It's not the programmer who programmed the computer because they didn't know anything about what you were doing. So who's going to be responsible? So there's that one one step. So it can take you so far. It can really help you to get there, but you have to take the training the intuition, all of the knowledge over time, and apply it. So I think it's going to be a good augmentation, not ever a replacement. I just don't see that happening, at least in my lifetime. [00:14:28] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, we'll see where it goes, but I, yes, that, that makes a lot of sense, and it's a great tool. I think that's a good way of thinking about it, not as a replacement, but just add it to your arsenal, so to speak, and yeah. Now you are a fellow podcaster and I would love if you would share a little bit about your podcast and how that all came about. [00:14:50] Jay Anders: Well, it's been, oh, it's been three years now. Wow. We were thinking about other ways that we could get the word out about what we do as a company, because my podcast is sponsored by the company I work for. But I also have a little bit of thespian in me. I was in plays in college and high school and all that nonsense. That kind of thing really didn't bother me. He says, "Well, let's give it a shot. What would it be like?" And he said, "Okay." So we had our first guest, second guest, things are kind of coming along. You get into a flow, really enjoy doing it, and the conversations are so stimulating. And then I had my conversation with Mickey Tripathi, who's the National Coordinator of Healthcare IT, and I wound up winning a Power Press Award for that particular interview. [00:15:39] Lindsey Dinneen: Congrats. [00:15:40] Jay Anders: It's been a lot of fun. It's engaging. And the feedback I get from it is that they like the conversation. Everybody likes to talk at you, not with you. And I've really tried to get out of that mode of just talking at somebody, but let's have a conversation about a topic. And I've learned a lot. I hope my listeners have learned a lot and it's been a great deal of fun. [00:16:08] Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, that's great. And I also recognize that you are a featured speaker on healthcare IT. And was that, well, you said you have this background in theater. So was public speaking something that came easily to you? Was it something you developed over time? [00:16:28] Jay Anders: It came pretty easily to me, I think. One of the things I did back three companies ago is I got to introduce a keynote speaker and talk about a keynote speaker in front of an M. G. M. A. Conference, and there had to be 6000 people in that audience. It was huge. But I walked out there and I said, "Okay, they're gonna listen to what I'm gonna have to say, and that's gonna be it. It's not gonna affect me." And it was a lot of fun, too. But so big crowds like that, it really doesn't affect me if I'm well prepped. If I'm passionate about talking about, it kind of rolls out of me naturally. So I don't have any problem with it. It's a lot of fun as well. [00:17:12] Lindsey Dinneen: Good. Yeah. Yeah. Just another opportunity to continue spreading that message. You know, I very much enjoyed looking at your LinkedIn profile and learning a little bit about you. And I wondered if you could share a little bit about, I saw that you do or have done in the past, some medical mission work to various countries. I would love if you would share a little bit about that and your heart for that. [00:17:38] Jay Anders: Well, in the past, I've not done it a lot recently, but I have taken several trips to Asia with a medical team and it had to be one of the most rewarding things I think I've ever done. And we were in the country of Kazakhstan, and we were seeing people who really don't have access to healthcare. And what healthcare they have over there was really not all that good. But we went over with a team of five. Had a physical therapist, a nurse, and probably 15 bags full of medications of which all went through customs without a hitch, which I was very surprised. But I got up in the morning, got there right at daybreak, and I would see 250 people a day and work till the sun went down. And there were still people to see. They were so appreciative of any kind of information, any kind of healthcare, any way you could help them. All done just, it was, like I said, one of the most rewarding things that I think I've ever done. And one of the best parts about that trip is I went and went to an orphanage that had, the kids needed health screenings. And there were about 200 kids. So we started early in the morning and I saw child after child after child after child ' till we finally got through the whole thing. And at the end of the day, it's now hanging in our kitchen. One of the little boys came up and said, "I want to give this to you, doctor." And it was a wooden plaque of an, with an urt on it, a camel and a little star. And in that part of the world, that's how they live is these urts, these very unique, tent like structures. And I just broke down. I couldn't, I, it was one of those things where that is going to me, to the nursing home because of that experience. But I highly recommend if anybody in healthcare and I'm not part of Doctors Without Borders, but I support them. If you have a chance to do that, do it. And you can do it as a non medical person because you always need support people. So if you think you want to do it, get yourself involved. It's great to do. It's massively rewarding and an experience that will last you a lifetime. [00:19:59] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, life changing. Yeah. Thank you for sharing about that. I thought that was really neat to see that's something that you've done in the past and you're passionate about. And speaking of passions, I know kind of a similar thing, but I think perhaps even in the US, this is something that you advocate for is, something that seems to bother you is the disparity of access to healthcare in more rural settings. And this is something that I feel like, on occasion, maybe some Americans don't realize that even in the United States, there is this disparity. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and your passion for that. [00:20:37] Jay Anders: Oh, absolutely. I grew up in a town of 20, 000 in the middle of Illinois. And I'll just give you a little progression. So in the town I grew up in, when I was a little boy at six, seven, we had two hospitals, nice size hospitals in that community. Roll ahead to 2024. One is a derelict building that looks horrifying. It's about to fall down. The other has merged with a larger system, which is about 40 miles away. It's coned down in size. They still do a lot of work there, but it's a lot of the major cases get shipped out to the mothership, which is in an adjacent city. But this plays out across rural areas all over the country. Hospitals are closing, they're under pressure, both cost of care as well as reimbursement for that care. Specialists in certain areas are very hard to come by. And when you look about the delivery of care, this is one of the things that bothers me the most. The people who get better in the hospital the quickest are the people who have support groups around them. They have parents, they have children, somebody to come and visit them and be with them, give them a reason to get better. When you move some of these rural hospitals and put them out of business or reduce them to the point they're just an aid station and you ship that patient to a medical center that's 50, 100 miles away, that support group goes away. It's very hard for that to even exist. So if you take into consideration the lack of real reimbursement at that level, at those types of hospitals, the lack of specialty care, which is still needed, and really the lack of primary care, things are headed downhill with that as well. It really is a disparate way of delivering healthcare in the United States. Not everybody can go to a Cleveland Clinic or a Mayo to get their healthcare. I live here in Western Pennsylvania. We have two massive institutions, both of which are wonderful, but not everybody can come here. People that are out in the Northern Pennsylvania, in the middle of the state, they got to travel because their hospitals are closing. And that I think is a travesty of the system. It's something that needs governmental intervention and it needs intervention in several different modes, meaning increased reimbursement, training physicians that want to practice in that type of environment. There are programs out there that are to start to do that, but it needs attention because people out there are not getting the same healthcare as I can get 15 miles up the road in the city of Pittsburgh. [00:23:28] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing a little bit about that, and even some suggestions for ways that this can be helped. I know it's a long road, but I appreciate that you are bringing light to it and helping to start those conversations that will hopefully lead to change down the road. So. [00:23:49] Jay Anders: And technology does have a place to play in doing that as well. Telehealth, distance, ICUs, things like that. There are ways that technology can augment that medical care, but it's expensive. There has to be some type of support for it, both at the state and federal levels. [00:24:09] Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. So I'm curious on your path and your journey so far, and obviously you've had a really interesting career path 'cause you've done a few different things over your career and you continue to, I'm sure, learn and grow. But are there any moments that stand out to you as really affirming that, "You know what, I am in the right industry at the right time, at the right time? I'm doing what I was meant to do." [00:24:36] Jay Anders: Boy, that's a great question. One of the things that really drew me to working at the company I'm working at now at Medicomp was the fact that they truly had the physicians and the providers of healthcare's best interest in mind. Foremost, everything we do, and I mean, everything we do, is geared to make their lives better, more effective, and deliver better care. That's what we do. So in my pathway, which came kind of went around in different ways and different companies, different sizes through acquisition and other things, I really wound up in a place where we're not a large company, but we're all of one mind. And that is an absolutely fabulous place to work when you're all pulling the rope in the same direction. And it's all for a great purpose. And when I have providers come up and tell me, "Well, we installed this or we're using this, and it really did help what I'm doing." I had nurses come up to me and at one of our installations that say, "I've got 50 percent more time to spend with my patients. I'm not spending it in an inefficient electronic health record. That's been fixed." And when people say that it's like, "Okay, I'm in the right place at the right time." [00:26:04] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, that's incredible. What great testimonies too. Oh my word. Thank you for sharing that. So pivoting the conversation just for fun. Imagine that you were to be offered the opportunity to teach a masterclass on anything you want. It can be in your industry, but it doesn't have to be. And you'll get a million dollars for it. What would you choose to teach? [00:26:30] Jay Anders: I would teach physicians and other clinicians change management theory and how to manage change. That's what I would teach. I've had the luxury in my career of having a professional coach for two years, professional training and leadership. It's been a great thing to have, but not everybody has that. I would love to be able to teach clinicians how they can manage all the change that comes at them every day. It's patience, it's technology, it's knowledge base, all of that. It's changing all the time. You got to have a method. You got to have some skills. You got to have some coping mechanisms to go through that. It can't overwhelm you every time you go to work. And I think that's part of our burnout problem is that there's the skill set of managing change just isn't there to the degree it ought to. And physicians throw their hands up. I'm going, "I'm retiring. I'm going somewhere. I can't do this anymore." And I think that's wrong. So, that's what I do. I would teach coping skills around change in healthcare. [00:27:46] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Excellent. And then, how do you wish to be remembered after you leave this world? [00:27:53] Jay Anders: I want to be remembered as somebody who made a difference. You know, a lot of people get into the healthcare IT business because they want to revolutionize this or revolutionize that. I don't want to revolutionize anything. I want to make a difference. And if I can make a difference, I've pretty much done what I went into this profession to do was make a difference with patients, make a difference in my colleagues, and in the industry I'm in now. That's what I want to be remembered as. [00:28:23] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And then, final question. What is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it? [00:28:33] Jay Anders: I'm going to go back to my story in Kazakhstan. Every time I think of that little boy coming up, grabbing my coat, jerking on it, to hand me that little plaque, that gives me a smile every time I think about it. It actually gives my wife a smile, too. Because we'll look up at that plaque in the kitchen and go, "I know where that came from. That was a good time." That makes me smile almost every time. [00:28:59] Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. What a powerful memory and just such great motivation, something to come back to on the difficult days and then you look at that and go, "Yeah. Okay. I can make a difference here. I did make a difference here." [00:29:14] Jay Anders: I did. [00:29:15] Lindsey Dinneen: I love that so much. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. I am so grateful to you for spending some time with me and just telling me about your background and the amazing work that you're doing, that your company is doing. And we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Feeding America, which works to end hunger in the United States by partnering with food banks, food pantries, and local food programs to bring food to people facing hunger, and they also advocate for policies that create long term solutions to hunger. So thank you for choosing that organization to support. And we just wish you the best continued success as you work to change lives for a better world. [00:30:00] Jay Anders: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. [00:30:02] Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. And thank you also so much to our listeners for tuning in. And if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love it if you would share this episode with a colleague or two, and we will catch you next time. [00:30:16] Ben Trombold: The Leading Difference is brought to you by Velentium. Velentium is a full-service CDMO with 100% in-house capability to design, develop, and manufacture medical devices from class two wearables to class three active implantable medical devices. Velentium specializes in active implantables, leads, programmers, and accessories across a wide range of indications, such as neuromodulation, deep brain stimulation, cardiac management, and diabetes management. Velentium's core competencies include electrical, firmware, and mechanical design, mobile apps, embedded cybersecurity, human factors and usability, automated test systems, systems engineering, and contract manufacturing. Velentium works with clients worldwide, from startups seeking funding to established Fortune 100 companies. Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

MONOLOGUE Canadians Are Demanding Major Reforms to Healthcare NOW! 'Chaotic': Private firefighters threatened with arrest if they defended structures in Jasper https://www.rebelnews.com/_chaotic_private_firefighters_threatened_with_arrest_if_they_defended_structures_in_jasper  Sheila Gunn Reid, Alberta Bureau Chief Rebel News, Host of The Gunn Show, Wednesdays 8pm eastern KEEPING AN EYE ON YOUR MONEY Highway 401 tunnel feasibility study must not be an afterthought https://www.taxpayer.com/newsroom/highway-401-tunnel-feasibility-study-must-not-be-an-afterthought  Jay Goldberg, Ontario Director of The Canadian Taxpayers Federation https://www.taxpayer.com THE HOME SCHOOL ADVISOR Adding Life Skills to Your Homeschool Curriculum https://www.homeschool.com/blog/add-life-skills-to-homeschooling-curriculum  Robert Bortins, CEO of Classical Conversations helping Christian Classical Homeschoolers across the USA and in Canada https://classicalconversations.com FEMA sacrificed the welfare of Americans in need by giving all their funds to illegal immigrants https://www.foxnews.com/media/fema-head-denies-agency-short-money-disaster-relief-because-funds-went-illegal-immigrants Michael A. Letts, Founder, President, and CEO of In-Vest USA, a national grassroots non-profit organization that is helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bullet-proof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs. McDonald's french fries and lies won't win the White House https://cherylchumley.substack.com/p/mcdonalds-french-fries-and-lies-wont Online opinion editor The Washington Times. Host "Bold & Blunt" podcast, author, commentary writer, public speaker, media guest. Also: Private investigator. www.CherylChumley.com Schools ignore minister's warning, partake in anti-Israel protests on Oct. 7 anniversary https://tnc.news/2024/10/07/levy-schools-partake-in-anti-israel-protests-oct-7/  Sue-Ann Levy Award-Winning Investigative Journalist, True North Contributor & Author of “Underdog: Confessions of a Right-Wing, Gay Jewish Muckraker” Understanding Physician Burnout: A Growing Concern in Healthcare https://physiciansnews.com/2024/10/04/understanding-physician-burnout-a-growing-concern-in-healthcare/  Pam Killeen is an author and Health and Wellness Coach with a focus on educating people about improving their sleep quality. https://pamkilleen.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 their way, the future of healthcare is especially grim. Today, we're doing a deep dive into what this thing is and how it could change healthcare as we know it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4kYQ-Hh5pY Show Notes Gillian Mason, Healthcare-NOW's Executive Director, has read Project 2025 so you don't have to. P25 is the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank founded in 1973 because conservative businessmen thought Richard Nixon was too liberal (remember that Nixon created the EPA and advocated for a better national health plan than Obamacare, so they weren't all wrong). They really hit their stride during the Reagan administration when they wrote his policy playbook, which they called the “Mandate for Leadership” — Reagan implemented or initiated about 60 percent of the 2,000 policy changes they recommended. They do this Mandate for Leadership report now every presidential cycle, and it's been pretty influential whenever a Republican wins. These people are unabashed fascists. We use that term a lot kind of casually but these guys literally fit the Merriam-Webster Webster dictionary definition: “a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” The Heritage Foundation's whole deal is consolidating all authority in the office of the president so he can implement severe economic and social regimentation based on nationalism and barely-veiled-when-it's-not-just-blatant racism. Project 2025 It's the “Mandate for Leadership” for this election season, so it's supposed to be a template for Trump's next four years. Although reading Project 2025 would make you think it was a room full of monkeys at typewriters type situation, it was actually written by a room full of Trump's cronies. Hundreds of people contributed to writing and researching this thing, and a hefty percentage were former Trump appointees and employees of the administration. Also, VP pick JD Vance just wrote the foreword for an upcoming book by Kevin Roberts, the head of the P25 team. Vance has also been a mouthpiece for some of the wilder shit in P25. Trump claims he really doesn't know much about P25. But it's still worth talking about because COINCIDENTALLY it turns out that a lot of his policies are the same as the ones in P25. The Premise: The liberals in Washington, in cahoots with Chinese Communists and the  “totalitarian cult known today as ‘The Great Awokening'” have put “the very moral foundations of our society are in peril.” (This is not an exaggeration— it's literally all on the first page) P25 has 4 main goals: Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people. Defend our nation's sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.'” All the recommendations are laid out systematically according to the different areas of the federal government they want to control (The Executive Office, Department of Homeland Security, Intelligence Services, Media Agencies, etc.) We'll mainly be focusing on healthcare today but context is important so here are a few highlights of what they're planning to give you some flavor: Reclassify most federal employees as appointees

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 Very Special Conference Episode! Since our theme this year is about what happens to Medicare for All in an election year — and beyond — we wanted to invite some of our favorite policy people with their fingers on the pulse of what's happening in DC to help us sort out what's happening with healthcare on Capitol Hill and what role we can play to get some justice out of DC in the coming year! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n36v0eTV1a8&t=1167s powerpress Our guests are Eagan Kemp and Alex Lawson. Eagan Kemp is the health care policy advocate for Public Citizen's Congress Watch division. He is an expert in health care policy and served as a senior analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office prior to coming to Public Citizen. Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works, the convening member of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition— a coalition made up of over 340 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans.  Show Notes With one of our major candidates being a guy who is solidly against Medicare for All and the other being Trump, is 2024 a bad federal election cycle, or the worst federal election of our lifetime, and why? Alex puts a positive spin on it: we are closer to M4A with a Biden presidency than any other Democratic presidency. He's definitely not a M4A guy, but all his other economic policies are based on Sanders-esque populism, rather than Obama-esque neo-liberalism. We've seen Biden enact serious corporate reform in several sectors, and in a second Biden administration, taking on corporate greed and sociopathy in health insurance is on the agenda. On the other hand, we know exactly what's at stake with another Trump presidency, driven entirely by profit for his billionaire friends. Eagan notes that there has been movement on Medicare in recent years, including die-hard GOPs shying away from talking about cuts to Medicare until after the election. At the same time, we're seeing Biden moving more toward the M4A movement and the folks trying to expand and improve traditional Medicare. We're seeing insurance companies running scared, feeling the pressure from our movement in a way they haven't before. Alex notes that Biden's economic vision contains a lot that Medicare for All folks can work with. Our movement worked hard to expand Medicare to include vision, hearing, and dental, which was ultimately included in Biden's Build Back Better plan. We didn't get that, but we did get prescription drug negotiations, which is a huge part of improving Medicare before we expand it to everyone. (Go back and listen to another episode where we were joined by Alex to discuss prescription drug negotiations for more details.) We've also seen a lot of good work against Medicare privatization, via Medicare Advantage, and that solidarity has moved the ball a lot - more than ever before to restrain private insurance companies. We didn't just give up when we knew Biden wouldn't sign M4A; we pivoted to expanding benefits and reversing the privatization with a lot of success. Eagan found a silver lining in - of all places - the subject of private equity in healthcare. He thinks we've passed the peak of PE ravaging healthcare, and they are now backing off the healthcare sector in part because of increased pressure from the DOJ, FTC and HHS. That's due to pressure from doctors, patients, and whistleblowers. Eagan also notes that the Trump administration pilot of throwing seniors in traditional Medicare into private relationships with providers.

On today's episode of Making Sense of Science, I'm honored to be joined by Dr. Paul Song, a physician, oncologist, progressive activist and biotech chief medical officer. Through his company, NKGen Biotech, Dr. Song is leveraging the power of patients' own immune systems by supercharging the body's natural killer cells to make new treatments for Alzheimer's and cancer. Whereas other treatments for Alzheimer's focus directly on reducing the build-up of proteins in the brain such as amyloid and tau in patients will mild cognitive impairment, NKGen is seeking to help patients that much of the rest of the medical community has written off as hopeless cases, those with late stage Alzheimer's. And in small studies, NKGen has shown remarkable results, even improvement in the symptoms of people with these very progressed forms of Alzheimer's, above and beyond slowing down the disease.In the realm of cancer, Dr. Song is similarly setting his sights on another group of patients for whom treatment options are few and far between: people with solid tumors. Whereas some gradual progress has been made in treating blood cancers such as certain leukemias in past few decades, solid tumors have been even more of a challenge. But Dr. Song's approach of using natural killer cells to treat solid tumors is promising. You may have heard of CAR-T, which uses genetic engineering to introduce cells into the body that have a particular function to help treat a disease. NKGen focuses on other means to enhance the 40 plus receptors of natural killer cells, making them more receptive and sensitive to picking out cancer cells. Dr. Song is the grandson of the late Sang Don Kim, who was the first popularly elected Mayor of Seoul, South Korea. Dr. Song serves as the co-chair for a Campaign for a Healthy California. In 2013, he was named and served as the very first visiting fellow on healthcare policy in the California Department of Insurance. In addition, Dr. Song serves on the executive board of Physicians for a National Health Program California, People for the American Way, Progressive Democrats of America, Healthcare NOW, The Eisner Pediatric and Women's Center, and the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. Dr. Song graduated with honors from the University of Chicago, received his M.D. from George Washington University and completed his residency in radiation oncology at the University of Chicago. He sees Medicaid and uninsured patients at Dignity California Hospital.With Dr. Song's leadership, NKGen's work on natural killer cells represents cutting-edge science that's resulting in key findings about two of humanity's most intractable diseases – contributing important pieces of the puzzle for treating them.Making Sense of Science features interviews with leading medical and scientific experts about the latest developments in health innovation and the big ethical and social questions they raise. The podcast is hosted by science journalist Matt Fuchs

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 drugs that keep us alive! As the Biden Administration enters its own Showcase Showdown with Big Pharma, we're taking a full episode to break down what that means and whether the result will be prices we can actually afford. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnxbIhEPhs0&t=1s Show Notes Our first (and only) contestant is Alex Lawson! He is the Executive Director of Social Security Works, the convening member of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition— a coalition made up of over 340 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans. Alex's organization played a critical role in moving the Democratic Party (mostly!) away from efforts to cut Social Security, and has been shifting the momentum towards expanding Social Security. Social Security Works is also a key ally of ours in the national fight for Medicare for All! Alex, come on down! Alex starts by telling us about the time he took a camera to PhRMA's (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) office the day of the Inflation Reduction Act signing ceremony. He conducted person-on-the-street interviews, asking if they knew PhRMA spent hundreds of millions of dollars to keep Medicare from being able to negotiate drug prices, and if they had any messages for the folks in the building? Most of the responses were of the "f-you PhRMA, we got you!" variety. PhRMA has literally never lost until the Inflation Reduction Act was passed. Even though it's modest, Medicare went from having no authority over drug prices to the authority and mandate to find the fairest price for certain drugs is a huge loss to the industry. Alex wants listeners to understand that this win is as simple as it sounds. Who buys the most drugs in the world? Medicare. Why doesn't Medicare tell the pharmaceutical companies what they're willing to pay? This is called the Maximum Fair Price. No other peer nation doesn't have some kind of negotiated standard for drug prices. While our guest and hosts would prefer that Medicare be allowed to negotiate the prices of all drugs used by beneficiaries, PhRMA was successful in limiting the Inflation Reduction Act drug provisions to only apply to ten pharmaceuticals. (Still, pharmaceutical companies are suing to block the implementation of price negotiations.) Negotiating the prices for only ten drugs may seem like a drop in the bucket, but the cost of those ten drugs alone make up a huge amount of Medicare's spending on Medicare Part D. And in coming years Medicare will be able to negotiate over ten more drugs, and so on. This will squish the most excessive profiteering of the pharmaceutical industry and deliver savings of $9 or $10 billion dollars a year. We give President Biden credit for taking an aggressive stance against PhRMA to finally make good on an evergreen Democratic campaign promise to lower drug prices. But we also give ourselves some credit. First there was the debate in Congress in 2019 over HR3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act. Advocacy by groups likes ours resulted in the House passing a robust bill that would have dramatically lowered drug costs. Then in 2021 both Healthcare-NOW and Social Security Works fought hard to win major expansions of Medicare in the Build Back Better bill (we were on track to win a lot more than prices for ten drugs). But Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema tanked the whole bill in the Senate. Those two battles led us to the Inflation Reduction Act aiming high from the start, and resulting in a bill that will make a big impact on drug spending by Medicare.

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 organize/advocate for Medicare for All?  Talk to one person, then another person, and then another! It doesn't start with money, marches, or celebrity endorsements (though if Oprah wants to support M4A, she should give us a call!) Those feel good, but without authentic relationships and networks, they don't make change. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts in organizing; we have to build the power ourselves. Do you have any funny stories from an experience meeting a member of congress? Gillian remembers meetings with former Republican U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown. Unfortunately all Senator Brown cared about was how the policy she was advocating for affected Dunkin Donuts. Gillian fondly remembers the time former U.S. Congressman Barney Frank told her that her hometown in New Jersey smelled bad. He also told a room full of constituents "the only thing that marches on Washington put pressure on is the grass in Washington, DC." Epic one-liner that we don't necessarily disagree with. (He already supported M4A so it was all good.) Intern Gulmeena, a public health student asks: When we talk about Medicare for all - are we thinking of a system with government run hospitals and government employed medical professionals? Do you think such a concept garners resistance or are people open to that paradigm shift? One of the most common attacks on M4A is to call it "socialized medicine." Very few countries actually have real socialized medicine, where insurance is public, all healthcare facilities are owned and operated publicly, and the healthcare professionals are public employees. In the United States, Medicare for All legislation does not socialize the facilities or professionals. By focusing on the payment mechanism, it would give the government a lot of power to reign in the worst parts of for-profit healthcare. Ben notes he has seen a poll showing a majority of Americans support socialized medicine, so who knows, maybe that's the future of the movement. Would Medicare for All include long term care for the elderly such as nursing homes and hospice? This has been a debate within our movement for a long time. Both M4A bills include long term care. The House version is more generous and comprehensive. The Senate bill would cover home-based long term care but not institutional. Currently most people get long term (which also includes care for people with disabilities) care through Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poorest Americans; this forces patients to spend down all their assets to qualify. Medicaid also has an institutional bias: it's much more likely to cover care in residential settings rather than homes, which is usually more expensive. If you're interested in advocacy around this issue, check out Caring Across Generations. Intern Ioanna (who hails from Greece, a country with universal healthcare): Considering that you have been a part of the movement since before Medicare for All was introduced by Sen. Sanders in 2017, how did you first hear about single payer healthcare, and what drove you into the movement at a time when it was not getting much or any (?) media attention? Back in the day of phone books and print newspapers, Gillian learned about universal healthcare from Ben! When her own employer-provided healthcare left her underinsured, a friend in the finance field told Gillian "if your job doesn't give you good health insurance, that's capitalism's way of telling you that your job isn't important and maybe you should get a new one.

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 wouldn't exist? In a single-payer system, there would have been no nefarious pharmaceutical executive to frame Harrison Ford for murder in order to cover up the side effects of Provasic. There would have been no need for Walter White to cook meth in order to pay for his cancer treatment. In fact, a lot of our favorite movies and TV shows would be entirely without conflict. In this episode, we take a look at a uniquely American subgenre: movies where our healthcare system is the villain! Plus, we dip into the Healthcare-NOW mailbag to hear from our listeners about your favorite movies where for-profit healthcare is the bad guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKat9vjm7tI SPOILER ALERT. Some of these movies are masterpieces, and we'll be discussing spoilers. Seriously, we advise that you pause the podcast and watch Dog Day Afternoon now. Let's discuss the uniquely American film genre that depicts the healthcare industry as the villain. One of the biggest healthcare villain blockbusters was, of course, The Fugitive (1993). Our hero Dr. Richard Kimball is falsely accused of murdering his wife. He escapes police custody and along the way uncovers the truth, that he was framed by an evil pharmaceutical executive who killed Mrs. Kimball to cover up the side effects of a profitable new drug. Fun fact: Tommy Lee Jones was the former college roommate of Vice President Al Gore. The term “healthcare industry” dates back to the 1970s, and so does the reality of for-profit healthcare. Major transformations of our healthcare system have created real-life nightmares and impossible situations for patients, and that growing widespread experience of a healthcare dystopia then creates an audience for Hollywood script writers to build drama around healthcare situations. Two of the films submitted by our members come from the very beginning of the “healthcare industry,” in the early 1970s: The Hospital (1971) stars George C. Scott and Diana Rigg. A serial killer targets doctors by making them patients in their own hospital, where they die due to hospital negligence. CW: weird sexual politics. Dog Day Afternoon (1975) starring Al Pacino and John Cazale, dramatizes a true story of two Brooklyn bank robbers, motivated to steal to pay for gender reassignment surgery for Pacino's character's partner. In 2015, real life dad Bryan Randolph of Detroit robbed a bank to pay for his 1-year-old daughter's cancer treatment after his health insurance canceled her plan. The next explosion of healthcare plots comes in the 1990s and early 2000s, when “managed care” plans and HMOs spread like wildfire, replacing traditional insurance. Intended to bring down rising healthcare costs, managed care brought us such classics as prior authorization, widespread claim denials and limited networks. This kicked off a new wave of films in the 1990s that start using health insurance villains become key plot points. The failed Clinton health reform efforts also happened in 1994, which created probably a sense of hopelessness around Congress fixing these problems. As Good As It Gets (1997): This cringefest features Jack Nicholson as a cranky, bigoted and obsessive compulsive writer. Nicholson's character can only eat at one restaurant, where he meets waitress Helen Hunt, and pays for her child's cancer treatment so she can continue to work and serve him. All kinds of toxicity, sexism, and structural inequities on display in this one. Patch Adams (1998): features Robin Williams in a real life story about a doctor whose unorthodox ways bump up agai...

The next monthly meeting of the Wilson County Democratic Club is planned for Thursday, June 15, where guest speaker Sofia Sepulveda will present information related to LGBTQ+ legislation and community involvement. A first-generation Mexican American trans-woman, Sofia has been organizing in San Antonio for the past nine years on healthcare and environmental justice, and was recognized as one of the 25 influential women who run San Antonio in 2019 for her work in healthcare. In 2021, she helped to pass legislation that extended Medicaid for new mothers. She also sits on the board of Healthcare-Now, ACT4SA, Transgender Education Network of...Article Link

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 eight we learn to tell “tertiary lies,” where we also make sure our lie is consistent with surrounding facts. But not until you've asked your legislator to support Medicare for All have you experienced the apex of deception: you walk out knowing they didn't agree with you, but you're not sure if they disagree with you, or whether you've learned anything about their position on the issue! So today we are here to talk about “legislative pushback,” or evasion, or avoidance - basically the whole playbook of tactics that legislators employ to land between “yes” and “no.” We are joined by Eagan Kemp and Vinay Krishnan today. Eagan is the Health Care Policy Advocate at Public Citizen. He is an expert in health care policy, including single-payer systems, and he previously served as a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Vinay Krishnan is the National Field Organizer for the Center for Popular Democracy. We know him as an organizer, but he's also a writer of fiction and non-fiction, and an attorney based in Brooklyn, NY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2-A6ubjVII Show Notes Medicare for All bills have not yet been introduced in the 118th Congress, the session that began in January 2023. Healthcare-NOW and our allies are starting our drive to gather co-sponsors BEFORE those bills are introduced. We expect the Medicare for All Act to be reintroduced before June in the House, and hopefully around the same time in the Senate. We aren't as dumb as Fox News conservatives like to make us seem, so we know that there isn't a great chance to pass M4A this session, but it's important to keep the momentum going by getting new cosponsors on the bill. Our past success in gaining co-sponsors has been due in large part to citizen lobbyists asking, pressuring and demanding their elected officials sign on. If you've never called your Senator or member of Congress, we have a guide! https://www.healthcare-now.org/makethecall. Some calls will be easy if you're lucky enough to be represented by die-hards like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA-7), the chief sponsors of the bills. But for many of the rest of us, our elected officials are wishy-washy, or even reluctant to sign on to M4A, so our guests give us some strategies for these conversations. Before we get into the objections, we want you to know you don't need to be a policy or health economics expert to talk to your elected officials. If you've been victimized by the American healthcare industry, you're an expert. While we've heard some wild reasons for not supporting M4A, most objections fall into a few basic categories: Downplaying the importance of co-sponsoring the bill "Medicare for All is just a slogan that's not going anywhere so I don't need to engage" "I'm not on a committee of jurisdiction so I can't co-sponsor" "I'm on a committee of jurisdictino so I can't co-sponsor" "I'm in leadership so I don't co-sponsor bills" Strategy: these answers tell you that the suffering of people in their district isn't important enough for them to take action. Help them understand why healthcare for all is so important for their constituents. Bring personal stories; stories can help break down initial barriers and make way for a real conversation. Next time bring even more people and more stories. "I support M4A but I won't co-sponsor" Strategy: consistent follow-up, so they continually feel the pressure. Allow them to ask questions and follow up with information.

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 healthcare justice, revisiting the highs, the lows, and the weird in-between shit! Like a lot of folks, Ben Day began his journey to Medicare for All activism as a patient. He was a graduate student in Labor Studies in his 20s when he developed a panic disorder that put him in the hospital and racked up his medical bills. He was so outraged by the experience of getting hung out to dry by the for-profit healthcare system that he decided to change course and spend his life fighting to bring down the system! Back in 2006, when Ben started as an organizer with Mass-Care, the Massachusetts campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare (This was before the term Medicare for All was commonplace in public discourse.), Massachusetts had just passed "Romneycare," a package of healthcare reform laws that became the model for the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), so Ben got a preview of how trying to reform the system without eliminating the private insurance companies can go VERY wrong, resulting in limited networks and other industry tricks to keep profits high. Of course, even with that insight into how reform unfolded in Massachusetts, Ben and other single-payer healthcare activists were marginalized and dismissed as naive radicals throughout the years of debate leading up to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, as moderate Democrats consolidated their efforts into demanding the policy non-solution that refuses to die: the public option. That ended badly both for advocates of the public option and advocates of Medicare for All, who lost out in the final version of the bill, but it was a positive development for private insurers, who now had millions of new customers lining up at their doors! By the time Ben came to work for Healthcare NOW in 2013, the whole country was mired in the backlash from right wing Republicans fighting tooth-and-nail to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, which had become a political symbol of the Obama administration. Ben explains that this was a turning point for the healthcare justice movement, as regular people who hadn't been involved with politics before stood up at town halls and listening sessions across the country, not just to defend the ACA, but to push legislators further and demand Medicare for All. Since then, we've seen massive growth in support for Medicare for All, and thanks in-part to Bernie Sanders, Medicare for All has been the top issue in the past two presidential elections, and Healthcare NOW is working with thousands of activists throughout the US to make Medicare for All a reality in our lifetimes. Ben speculates that even though we still have a fight on our hands to win, there are enough of us now that we won't be marginalized or dismissed in the debate about healthcare ever again! Want to help us celebrate Ben's 10-year anniversary and make sure we get Medicare for All in a timely fashion so he doesn't have to do this job for another 10 years? Make a donation to Healthcare NOW today!

Listeners, how many times has this happened to you? You find a great doctor, you make an appointment, and you think everything is fine… until you get the dreaded call from the insurance company that your sweet new doc is “Out of Network.” Well, you aren't alone – just in the past few months, limited provider networks have been making news, as Johns Hopkins, one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country, is leaving the CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield network, which could impact nearly 300,000 patients in the Baltimore area. In this episode, we're going to demystify what these networks are and how they're screwing us all and uncover the depressing history of how limited provider networks came out of the longstanding American tradition of screwing immigrants. https://youtu.be/EkDSdUpAZ_o Show Notes So what are "limited networks" or "narrow networks" in your health insurance? Gillian breaks it down: When your health insurance has a limited network, it means you can only get care from a small number of physicians or hospitals that have contracted with your insurance company, and agreed to accept lower rates to treat you. If you receive care “out of network,” it will either be completely uncovered by your health insurance, or you'll have to pay a huge portion of your bill. Health plans with “broad networks” usually cover around 70% of all providers in the local area - but “narrow networks” generally cover less than 25% of available providers, some even less than 10%. It's VERY common for the largest hospital chains to be excluded - like the recent example of John Hopkins in Baltimore. The result is that you generally pay a lower premium for a limited network plan: one study found that premiums were 16% lower for narrow network plans, which honestly isn't much of a savings for the impact on patients' lives! Insurers LOVE limited network plans, because in addition to paying lower rates to providers, they also have the affect of “cherry picking” - since healthier individuals tend to opt into limited network plans, if they have a choice. Ben is currently in a limited network plan, because under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) small employers like Healthcare-NOW get subsidies for health insurance they offer to their workers, but ONLY if they offer insurance through the ACA's state exchanges. And as we'll discuss about, limited networks plans have absolutely overrun the state exchanges. The impact on Ben has been difficulty finding specialists, having long waits for specialists, and his primary care doctor basically can't coordinate his care at all, since the specialists she knows, trusts, and works with, are almost all "out of network" under his plan. Ben saw a sports medicine doctor who diagnosed his sciatica, who was in-network for him, but all of the physical therapists at the same sports medicine center - whose offices are right next to his - were out-of-network! How did this all come about? Managed care plans in the 1990s first ushered in the idea of limited networks. These were when the insurer owned their own provider network (like Kaiser Health Plan), so if you had that insurance, you could only see the providers that they “owned.” Today, there aren't a TON of traditional managed care plans like this - usually your insurance plan creates limited networks by negotiating with physicians and hospitals, and only accepting those willing to accept the lowest rates. So who is most impacted by this new incarnation of limited networks? Ben says there are THREE groups of people most impacted by limited networks today: ACA plans sold on the state exchanges - really, anyone on the “individual market,” buying health insurance on their own. Includes virtually all self-employed people, contractors, artists, without a traditional employer; Medicare Advantage plans; and Student health plans. While slightly different from the above, we're gonna add a DIS-honorable mention here for Medicaid...

Everything is bigger in Texas, including medical bills and the uninsured population. The Lone Star state has the second-largest population in the country, and is among the fastest-growing as well, but all those people are stuck with THE worst healthcare system and very poor health outcomes as well. The uninsured rate is more than twice the national average. Our guest today is Sofia Sepulveda, an activist based in San Antonio, Texas, organizing for healthcare justice, environmental justice, and trans rights. She is co-chair of San Antonio's Healthcare-NOW coalition. In 2021, she was part of a successful campaign to pass legislation that expanded Medicaid for new mothers in Texas from two months to six months. She is also the co-founder of Trans Power San Antonio and sits on the board of the Transgender Education Network of Texas and the Community Advisory Board for Centro Med in San Antonio. Most importantly, she is on the board of Healthcare-NOW, the organization that hosts your favorite podcast! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQjkPYi25MM Show Notes What's the Lone Star version of our crappy American healthcare system? First, they are one of only 12 states that haven't expanded Medicaid. That means that the only the neediest people qualify for Medicaid. Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country at 18%, more than twice the national average of 8.6%. That rises to 30% uninsured among Hispanic Texans and 17% among African Americans. 11% of children in Texas are uninsured. Only 5 other states have more than 12% of their population uninsured (AK, FL, GA, MI, OK) Texas also has the largest number of residents who said they skipped healthcare they needed because of costs and fewer residents who report having a regular source of healthcare. In Texas, health insurance costs comprise a larger portion of the median income in Texas than in other states. Premium contributions were 8 percent of median income or more. Mortality rates in Texas are higher for treatable conditions, and is 74% higher among the Black population. A friend of Gillian's once said "in Texas we don't go to the doctor; we just die." Texas is ranked dead last in access to mental health care.  Why won't Texas expand Medicaid??? Around 750,000 Texans fall into the Medicaid “coverage gap” - too poor to qualify for ACA marketplace assistance, yet ineligible for Medicaid because Texas is one of only 12 states that have opted out of the expansion. In some other states, voters have bypassed elected leaders via ballot measures to adopt Medicaid Expansion. Not a thing here. Even though 64% of Texans approve of Medicaid expansion (82% of Democrats). Legislation to adopt Medicaid expansion has been introduced consistently in Texas state legislature with no success. Despite huge public support for Medicaid expansion, without support from the Governor, the bills are DOA. One bill sought to give counties or cities the right to accept the funds allocated by the CMS  Another (called the “Texas Solution”) would have set up a system where the state could receive block grants to enroll individuals in private plan using a sliding scale subsidy, rather than expanding Medicaid to cover them - this was also DOA. Structural Racism Racial health disparities exist across the US, but in Texas they are exacerbated by geography, distance, environmental factors, and a shortage of physicians.   Texas ranks last in so many healthcare measures due to structural racism. In 2021, the size of the Latinx population in Texas surpassed the white population - 40.2% of the state is Latinx, while 39.4% is white. In every states, Latinos/as are the most likely to be uninsured, and have the worst healthcare coverage, so the combination of Texas's healthcare policies, along with structural racism and a very large Latinx community, is really deadly. Much of the economy is stacked against BIPOC, especially Latinx people.

Today we're tackling Medicare Advantage, which is the option Medicare enrollees have to use a private insurance company to administer their Medicare benefits instead of the traditional public Medicare program. Almost HALF of all Medicare beneficiaries are now enrolled in Advantage plans, which represents a historic level of privatization of the almost 60-year program. Just this weekend, the New York Times published a blockbuster front-page report on everything that is wrong about Advantage plans. We'll get into all of that with our guest, Dr. Susan Rogers. Dr. Rogers spent most of her career at Stroger Hospital of Cook County (fka Cook County Hospital, the basis for blockbuster TV drama "ER") where she was a Primary Care Physician in a neighborhood clinic before becoming a hospitalist and Director of Medical Student Programs for the Department of Medicine. She is a past co-president of Health Care for All Illinois. She retired in 2014, and is now president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a national organization of over 25,000 physicians and health professionals whose mission is to advocate for Single Payer Healthcare/Medicare for All.  https://youtu.be/oi1BUAhbx3U Show Notes Dr. Rogers tells us her advocacy for Medicare for All grew from her experience training and working at a large public safety net hospital where providers and patients made decisions about care based on need, not ability to pay. It was the best way to learn to provide care, and the best way for patients to receive care. What's the difference between Medicare and Medicare Advantage? We dig into Medicare Advantage (aka Medicare Part C) plans, and how they differ from the traditional public Medicare program. Traditional Medicare is funded by payroll taxes. Hospital coverage (Part A) is free for eligible people. There are no networks. It's a fee-for-service plan, so providers are paid for each service they provide that's medically necessary. The narrative began in the 1980's that fee-for-service was responsible for "overuse" of healthcare services. (To paraphrase Minnesota single payer hero Senator John Marty: as if people go get an extra colonoscopy just because it's paid for.) The solution was to put private insurance between the doctor and patient to prevent overuse. Medicare Advantage evolved from the introduction of private insurance into the Medicare system, resulting in every insurance company in America skimming massive profits off the top of a taxpayer funded federal program, while providing no actual care. Medicare Advantage plans are required to cover all medically necessary care, but the definition of medically necessary is defined by the insurance company based on cost, not by the physician based on medical expertise. Medicare Advantage replaces the doctor/patient relationship with someone in an insurance company office - potentially with no healthcare training - deciding what's medically necessary. Gillian shares some stories from Healthcare-NOW members who have been enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. Common themes were delays in care, denial of coverage, limited networks, and limited pharmaceutical formularies. These features (not bugs) of Medicare Advantage can lead to serious, even deadly deterioration of a patient's health. We also heard stories of patients in need of specialty care for conditions like cancer, but few of the large academic centers or cancer institutes accept Medicare Advantage plans. The overhead cost to run traditional Medicare is about 2%. That means approximately 98% of the money in the traditional Medicare pot goes to providing care to enrollees. By law, Medicare Advantage plans only have to spend 85% of their pot on patient care, and they can keep the other 15% (this is how they afford huge executive salaries, among other "overhead.") They make that 15% slice of the pie more profitable by delaying and denying care as well as by fraudulently overc...

Jack Liu and Dr. Hamlet Benyamin join Mark Reiboldt to discuss the shift from a one size fits all approach to precision medicine which is individualized to each person. Dr. Benyamin defines precision experience as the unique experience a person needs as they enter the healthcare workforce.   Podcast Information  Follow our feed in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, or your preferred podcast provider. Like what you hear? Leave a review! We welcome all feedback from our listeners. Email us questions on any of the topics we discuss or questions about issues that interest you. You can also provide recommendations on matters for future episodes.  Please email us: feedback@cokergroup.com Connect with us on LinkedIn: Coker Group Company Page Follow us on Twitter: @cokergroup Follow us on Instagram: @cokergroup Follow us on Facebook: @cokerconsulting   Episode Synopsis  How do we assess the barriers and processes for the healthcare workforce so we can deliver better care for everyone? Covid-19 shed light on the healthcare delivery process, particularly within the patient and provider dynamic. Precision experience is essential to all aspects of the healthcare delivery process, from physicians and advanced practice providers to supporting staff. Healthcare can use the insights as a jumping-off point to leap forward and improve processes that have been problematic for years. An opportunity arises from a crisis to improve the system for the people it serves. Click to listen to the episode and learn more about the precision experience for healthcare.   Extras Precision Experience: What it is and Why it Matters to Healthcare Now? Learn more about ProCARE Portal Precision Experience: The Solution to Creating a Shared Vision

There's some adult language in this episode, so might not be appropriate for our youngest M4A advocates. The recent leak of what is likely to be the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has us enraged about the future of abortion and healthcare in America. Spoiler: We aren't loving the fact that five fucking reactionary clowns can take away the bodily autonomy of half the population of the US. Today, we're making the case for why abortion access and - more broadly, reproductive justice - must be part of the Medicare for all movement.  Our guest is Stephanie Nakajima, Executive Director of Mass-Care: the Massachusetts Campaign for Single-Payer Healthcare. (But most importantly: former Director of Communications for Healthcare-NOW and former co-host of the Medicare for All podcast!) Show Notes Thanks to the Hyde Amendment (passed in 1976), federal funds (like Medicaid or insurance plans for federal/state employees) cannot be used to pay for a person's abortion, unless that person became pregnant through rape, incest, or their life is in danger. This was a direct response to the original Roe v. Wade decision It has been reenacted every year since, likely because legislators feel like it's too much of a hot button issue to mess with (i.e., we should just be happy for the access that is available and try not to push it further) This isn't the case in most developed countries. For example, Ireland and Italy, which are famous for their devout Catholic populaces, even allow for publicly funded abortions.  About 87% of employer-sponsored insurance plans cover medical and surgical abortion services. However: That means only people who have private insurance have access to these services, unless you live in one of the 17 states that fund abortions through state healthcare 10 states in the US don't even allow private insurance to cover abortion (Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan) Stephanie has been the leading voice uplifting the importance of reproductive health in the single payer movement. Reproductive care, like most healthcare, is often out of reach for people who are uninsured or underinsured. In addition to the barriers to get an abortion (like protestors, 24 hour waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds) the cost of the procedure. If you are poor and/or your healthcare plan is funded by the government, you are paying out of pocket for these services (the average cost of 1st trimester abortion in a non-hospital setting in the US is $508, costs increase into the thousands in later trimesters.) When we talk about "choice" we're talking about whether a person has a legal right to an abortion or will they be forced to give birth. By reframing the narrative around reproductive freedom, we broaden the conversation to include abortion rights as well as access to affordable or publicly-funded reproductive care, the right to have children, and access to services to raise and care for children like healthcare, childcare, a living wage, and paid family leave. Shifting to a Medicare for All system would have profound impacts on access to reproductive care - for better or potentially for worse - the M4A movement has NOT always had a great track record in supporting reproductive care. Many in the movement feel it's a separate issue that we should leave alone for fear of it taking down the chances of M4A. But if we don't fight for inclusion of this extremely common healthcare procedure in a M4A system, we are erasing the healthcare needs of a wide swath of the population. In 2016, Colorado's single-payer ballot initiative - Amendment 69 overlooked abortion access, which led to opposition from NARAL ProChoice Colorado and Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which provided cover for most of the Democratic Party in the state to also oppose the ballot initiative. In large part to the catastrophic impact their single payer b...

Did you recently turn 26? Get kicked off your parents' insurance? Have you been scrolling through your state's healthcare exchange website, wondering if it would just be cheaper to crawl into a hole and die? Have we got the episode for you! We're sitting down today with Lisa Giordano, Executive Director of the Association of Young Americans (AYA), to discuss the often overlooked healthcare crisis faced by young American workers. AYA is a membership-based, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization by and for young people. The AYA advocates at the federal level to advance policies and legislation important to younger generations. They are part of the national Medicare for All Coalition, with Healthcare-NOW and many other allies. Show Notes Unlike previous generations that entered the workforce after college and pretty quickly found a good job with generous benefits, young adults today are surviving as part of the gig and service economies, with lower pay , less stability and less access to employer paid benefits. They also left college with far more debt than their parents did. Gen Z is defined as anyone born between about 1996 and 2021, so they are just starting to turn 26 and can no longer stay on their parents' healthcare. As young adults age out of their parents' health insurance, many go without coverage. In 2019, adults aged 19-34 had the highest uninsured rate of any age group in the US (15.6%, compared to 5.7% for those under 19, 11.3% for adults ages 35 to 64, and 0.8% for individuals 65 and older). 26-year-olds have the nation's highest uninsured rate among all single years of age, followed by 17.5% of 27-year-olds. Cheaper, “catastrophic” health care plans are often marketed to young people because they're healthier and “don't need” comprehensive plans. This is flawed thinking, of course. Young people can have chronic illnesses, disabilities, accidents, pregnancies, and other serious health conditions, putting them at risk of incurring huge medical debts. In addition, young adulthood is often when patients experience the onset of many serious mental health conditions and substance use disorder, the rates of which have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The opposition at the Partnership for America's Healthcare Future (made up of the hospital, insurance and pharma industries and Chambers of Commerce) attacks Medicare for All, using the “one size fits all" narrative to persuade young people to oppose M4A based on the assumption that they're healthy and don't need comprehensive health coverage. Young folks should have the "choice" to buy lower-cost catastrophic plans and not pay into the expensive coverage that older people will need. The Affordable Care Act has been heralded as a success for young people because it allows them to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26. But this only benefits young people whose parents have high quality family insurance plans through their employer or the private market. This benefit is out of reach to young people whose parents don't have stable employment or whose employers don't provide insurance. The young adults who are shut out of this ACA benefit are more likely to be BIPOC people, already experiencing racism, health disparities and income inquality compared to their white peers. There has been a lot of news coverage surrounding the so-called “Great Resignation” among Gen Z and Millennial workers. This narrative is based on a lot of misconceptions surrounding young people in the workforce, for example that young people are quitting jobs in massive numbers because they are “lazy” and don't want to work. These generalizations tend to ignore that young people may be leaving jobs that lack benefits or don't pay a living wage. To learn more about the great work the Association of Young Americans is doing around healthcare justice, as well as student debt and climate change, visit https://joinaya.org. Resources:

For this episode of the Poverty Policy Podcast we're teaming up with the Healthcare-NOW! and their Medicare for All podcast for a crossover episode. We discuss the Build Back Better bill and weigh its potential impact on individuals experiencing poverty and homelessness. Speakers: Courtney Pladsen, DNP, FNP-BC, RN: Director of Clinical and Quality Improvement at NHCHC Barbara DiPietro, PhD: Senior Director of Policy at NHCHC Benjamin Day: Executive Director at Healthcare-NOW! Gillian Mason: Director of Communications and Development at Healthcare-NOW! Medicare For All Podcast from HC-NOW! https://www.healthcare-now.org/medicare-for-all-podcast/ NHCHC's Health Insurance Enrollment Brief https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/HCH-Insurance-Issue-Brief_2020.pdf NHCHC's Build Back Better Bill Summary https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/BBB-Bill-Summary-Nov-29-2021.pdf NHCHC's Letter to Congressional Leadership on BBB Health Provisions https://nhchc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/BBB_Letter-to-Congressional-Leadership_Signed.pdf

Are the German and Dutch health insurance systems really private? What would it actually take to transition to a social insurance model? Once and for all, we debunk the myth that we can "build on the current public-private healthcare system" to achieve universal coverage.  Show Notes Ben and Stephanie discuss Healthcare-NOW's recently-completed comprehensive comparison of public healthcare systems in the European Union. Much to the chagrin of the establishment - Medicare for All is the campaign that won't die. First in 2016, back when Bernie Sanders dared to run on the policy, the media tried to cancel M4A “puppies and rainbows.” That did not work. This argument, beloved by wonks, pundits and moderates alike, claims that most EU countries achieve universal coverage without single payer. They accomplish this with competing private health insurance, along with tight regulation and government subsidies that make premiums affordable for everyone. Is this true? So now instead of arguing against M4A, they're saying that we don't have to “blow up” the whole healthcare system to get to universal healthcare, there are “other pathways” that look shockingly like the system we already have: one in which some people have really comprehensive private healthcare, some have an ACA plan with a $15k deductible, some have their healthcare plan as an employee of Hobby Lobby, some have Medicaid, Medicare, whatever. Nope. Depending on how you count them, there are between 30 and 35 countries in Europe.  27 of those countries have a fully public health insurance system. Either one single fund that's run by the national government (England, all of Scandinavia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, etc.) or there could be several administrators of the one public plan, like in France or Austria, where you've got one government-defined package that is delivered for historical reasons by 4 or 5 big quasi public insurance funds, depending on your occupation. They're noncompetitive, you don't choose which system you get in, etc. A sort of corollary to this is Canada. Because of the way the system was developed, it isn't actually one single national plan but are separate plans administered by the provinces. But we still call it single payer. 6 countries use a hybrid model, where “sickness funds” or quasi-public, third-party entities provide primary healthcare coverage. In this option, the government assumes the risk, the government pools healthcare taxes and premiums, profits are illegal, and the sickness funds are heavily regulated by a nationally-set benefits package.Only 1 country (Slovakia) runs on a for-profit, private insurer network. (And this is actually in violation of EU law).  As the movement for Medicare for All has heated up since 2017, and increasing pressure placed on Democrats to support it, centrist/corporate Dems have started fetishizing these 6 countries, portraying them as “the ACA on steroids” and potential models for achieving universal healthcare WITHOUT having to take on the health insurance industry. Even more troubling, almost every healthcare reporter at every major “liberal” newspaper, radio outlet, and major news blog, has taken the same position - and they've been pumping out extraordinarily inaccurate coverage. Respected healthcare journalists like Margot Sanger-Katz, Julie Rovner, Dylan Scott, and Paul Krugman have written multiple inaccurate articles mischaracterizing European healthcare as private, premium-based and universal healthcare system (while in fact they are publicly funded through taxes). Ben and Stephanie bust myths that are well-loved by moderate Democrats, who claim that Medicare for All is too politically difficult to pass, and we could arrive at our goal with Euro-style private system. These narratives tend to gloss over elements of European plans that are essentially like Medicare for all: Mostly or entirely publicly financedNo one profits off of health insuranc...

We're joined by L.A. Kauffman, author of How to Read a Protest: the Art of Organizing and Resistance. L.A. Kauffman was the mobilizing coordinator for some of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history -- the massive Iraq antiwar protests of 2003 and 2004 -- and has played key roles in many other movements and campaigns. Her book is about the role of marches and rallies in social movements, particularly large-scale mass demonstrations. Show Notes Today we talk tactics, and in particular, do rallies and marches work? This is a timely topic as we start to re-enter society after over a year of pandemic lockdown, and we're finally starting to plan in-person collective actions again. We're joined by L.A. Kauffman, the mobilizing coordinator for some of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history -- the massive Iraq antiwar protests of 2003 and 2004 -- and a key player in many other movements and campaigns. L.A. is the author of a 2018 book that we love here at Healthcare-NOW, called How to Read a Protest: the Art of Organizing and Resistance, which is specifically about the role of marches and rallies in social movements, particularly large-scale mass demonstrations. L.A. tells us she wrote How to Read a Protest after her experience of the single largest day of protest in world history, against the rush to war in Iraq, on February 15, 2003. Despite the record-breaking numbers of people on the streets in countries on every continent, the protest failed, resulting in little more than a shrug from the White House. L.A. tells us she wrote the book to try to figure out why. Why do we march? Where do protests come from? What do they accomplish, and are they even worth doing? Spoiler alert: we don't typically achieve policy objectives from mass mobilizations. Most of us think of the legendary 1963 March on Washington as a success: "MLK had a dream, people marched, and civil rights legislation passed," but it was much more complicated than that. Mass mobilization just doesn't work as a short-term pressure tactic. L.A. shares that the 2003 global anti-war protests failed because, in the wake of America's defeat in the Vietnam war, it was imperative for the U.S. government to prove that an empire can wage war at will. The administration shrugged off the massive public opposition, daring the mass mobilizations to continue. They did not. Ben fondly recalls meeting with former Congressman Barney Frank, who once told activists calling for a million-person protest to win Medicare for All, "the only thing that Marches on Washington apply pressure to is the grass in Washington, DC." If marches aren't accompanied by calls from and meetings with constituents, they won't have the desired impact on lawmakers. The 1963 March on Washington was the first major march in DC. Since then, it's become almost routine for movements to hold marches on Washington, many of which have been very forgettable. But at the time it was very novel, and -- motivated in large part by racism -- feared by the powers that be. The predictions that hundreds of thousands of Black people marching in DC would cause riots and violence never came to be, though. We contrast the stately 1963 March which was centrally planned from the top down (entirely by men), and very tightly policed -- all the way down to prohibiting all but pre-printed protest signs -- with the 2017 Women's March, which mobilized 4.2 million people across the country with improvisational and decentralized leadership and a diverse spectrum of messages. They were very different mobilizations with very different outcomes. The book reveals that the 1963 March actually drew energy away from smaller, local civil rights actions, while the 2017 Women's March resulted in countless local organizing efforts around progressive issues. All of the time, money, and energy spent on the 1963 March left the movement depleted afterward, limiting the amount of follow up organizing.

While COVID-19 news has remained a hot topic throughout 2020, it's still difficult for many to discover the truth. Where did COVID-19 come from? What is still effective against infection? On this episode, Dr. Paul Y. Song shares his expertise on the pandemic that ravaged the global population. Paul Y. Song, M.D. is a physician, progressive activist, and biotechnology chief medical officer. In addition to being a contributor to the Huff Post, Dr. Song serves on the executive board of Physicians for a National Health Program California, People for the American Way, Progressive Democrats of America, Healthcare NOW, The Eisner Pediatric and Women's Center, and the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies. In his practice, he specializes in Radiation Oncology.

In January, the Campaign for New York Health made single payer history in the United States: the bill secured the support of a majority of co-sponsors in both chambers of the New York State legislature. Campaign organizers Ursula Rozum and YuLing Koh Hsu join us to discuss how NY got here and the very real chance to win Medicare for all at the state level! Show Notes The Campaign for New York Health recently achieved a huge majority of cosponsors of the New York Health Act in the State Assembly and a narrow majority in the State Senate, so this week Ben and Stephanie speak with co-directors YuLing Koh Hsu and Ursula Rozum about their work over the last several years leading to this milestone. They discuss the early days of the work, the broad coalition they've assembled, and the story-based organizing and lobbying that has been key to their success. In New York, the people who are impacted by the healthcare system the most are leading the movement, including patients, families, and small business owners who can't afford healthcare coverage. Everyone is an expert on their own experience with the healthcare system, and New York's story-driven strategy focuses on real people to build the grassroots demand that's necessary to pass major legislation. Predictably, the insurance industry is actively opposed to the New York Health Act, relying on the usual arguments that the legislation will raise their taxes. It's important to remember that they are making billions on the status quo, and their arguments all need to be viewed through the lens that they will say anything – true or false – to maintain their control over care and ability to make profits.    Even with a majority in the Assembly and Senate, the last step of passing the New York Health Act is going to be the hardest. The next step for New York is to organize legislative co-sponsors to become vocal supporters of the bill. The new legislators elected in 2020 are bringing a bold, progressive approach to the work, and the campaign will focus on moving more legislators from being passive co-sponsors to active champions of the bill who will demand a vote from the Speaker of the Assembly and Leader of the Senate. YuLing discusses their campaign's theory of change: to build a long term, mass movement that can not only pass legislation, including financing, but will also do the hard work to make sure the Act works for the people it was built for.   Ursula stresses the importance of understanding that the American failure to pass a national health system has roots in systemic racism; white supremacist opposition to a desegregated health system killed early attempts to pass national healthcare, and compromises in the creation of Medicare and Medicaid allowed Southern states to discriminate against patients of color. Our current profit-driven healthcare system continues to reinforce racial hierarchies. The lesson today is that programs and policies intended to marginalize people of color end up hurting everyone, and a multi-racial, anti-racist healthcare movement is necessary to move the United States toward a just healthcare system. (For more, see Healthcare NOW's video, “The Politics of Race and Medicare for All: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eN0KhJ3BoI.) Ursula and YuLing urge other state healthcare movements to focus on the long-term fight, building leaders, and using stories as the foundation of the work. There are no shortcuts to organizing; building a base and a strong leadership has to happen before a bill can pass.   Follow & Support the Pod! You can listen to Medicare for All on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or visit our website here. Please donate to the Healthcare-NOW Education Fund to support the podcast!

This is episode 51, “Public Option, Unions, Obligation, Part 2.“ My guest, James McGee, has spent his career in and around collectively bargained benefit plans, especially health care plans. He has primarily worked on union benefit plans, which are technically known as Taft-Hartley plans.  Mr. McGee recently retired after 17 years working for the Transit Employees' Health & Welfare Fund as its Executive Director. The Fund provides the health care benefits for the active and retired members of ATU Local 689 employed by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). In this role, he become acutely aware of the deficiencies of our current health care system and began to take an active role in organizations advocating for reform, especially a single-payer solution. Mr. McGee is on the Steering Committee of the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer, the Montgomery County Chapter of Healthcare-NOW, and on the Board of Directors of Universal Health Care Action Network (UHCAN). In Part 1, we discussed problems with the public option. Part 2 discusses how unions would benefit from Medicare for All and why health care is an obligation.  Do not miss this episode as Mr. McGee discusses how unions would benefit from Medicare for All and why health care is an obligation. 

An episode dedicated entirely to understanding where we stand in the fight for Single-Payer Healthcare. Pat interviews Stephanie Nakajima, Director of Communications for Healthcare NOW, a grassroots organization fighting to win a national single-payer healthcare system because they believe access to healthcare is basic to human dignity. Topics discussed: - Abolishing for-profit health insurance is the only way to achieve the efficiency, cost savings, and improved outcomes for all that a single-payer system would provide - Why a public option won't work - Why passing single-payer on a state by state basis could be the solution: it was for Canada - Efficiency of 20+% for private insurance vs. 1-3% for publicly administered healthcare - California and New York are close to passing a state administered single-payer system - Our money, paid in the form of premiums to health insurance companies, is helping to fund the lobbyists who fight against a Medicare For All, single-payer system - How centrists continue to co-opt the arguments made in favor of single-payer, but in favor of private, for-profit healthcare - What can we do to help move this fight forward? Medicare For All, Single-Payer Healthcare, Universal Healthcare, Lobbyists, Healthcare as a human right, Congress, the Senate, Employer-based Healthcare, Denmark, Vermont, --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/trickledownsocialism/support

This is episode 50, “Public Option, Unions, Obligation, Part 1.“ My guest, James McGee, has spent his career in and around collectively bargained benefit plans, especially health care plans. He has primarily worked on union benefit plans, which are technically known as Taft-Hartley plans.  Mr. McGee recently retired after 17 years working for the Transit Employees' Health & Welfare Fund as its Executive Director. The Fund provides the health care benefits for the active and retired members of ATU Local 689 employed by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). In this role, he become acutely aware of the deficiencies of our current health care system and began to take an active role in organizations advocating for reform, especially a single-payer solution. Mr. McGee is on the Steering Committee of the Labor Campaign for Single-Payer, the Montgomery County Chapter of Healthcare-NOW, and on the Board of Directors of Universal Health Care Action Network (UHCAN). My interview with Mr. McGee covers two episodes 50 and 51. This episode discusses problems with the public option. Part 2, available on March 1st, discusses how unions would benefit from Medicare for All and why health care is an obligation.  Do not miss this episode as Mr. McGee explains why the public option is bad for the public. 

  The federal response to the deadly coronavirus pandemic under President Trump has been a public health disaster with more than 230,000 Americans dead and no clear end in sight. In sharp contrast, President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to mount a serious response against the coronavirus. Biden recently announced a panel of health care experts to begin to counter a surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations throughout the country. On the matter of health reform, however, the president-elect has offered measures that would merely bolster and even expand the same private health insurance system that has prompted physicians and other frontline healthcare workers to feel like they are fighting COVID-19 with one hand tied behind their backs. Biden ran on returning the country to normalcy but there was nothing normal about the American healthcare system before the pandemic. The truth is our dysfunctional medical system remains an outlier among the rest of the so-called developed world. The United States produces some of the worst health outcomes in the industrialized world and devours an ever-increasing share of our economy with health spending accounting for an astounding 17.9 percent of the GDP with nothing to show for it. As many as 250,000 Americans die each year from medical errors. That's more than the amount of people who have died from COVID-19. Is that the kind of return to normalcy that Americans want, need or deserve? The answer, of course, is no. Poll after poll has shown that Americans want a universal, single-payer healthcare system that is focused on meeting human needs and not the needs of investors. Medical care under a single-payer system, usually referred to as Medicare for All, would be universal, meaning everyone in the United States, including undocumented immigrants, would have equal access to treatment; it would be free at the point of care since there would be no premiums and no cost-sharing; and unlike our current Medicare program for seniors, vision, dental and long-term-care services would be covered, too. There are few parts of the country that would benefit from Medicare for All more than the South. The coronavirus pandemic has provided us with an opportunity to make sweeping changes to our social welfare system like Medicare for All but they are destined to fail without the support of people living in the South. Private health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and banks, which have ensnared millions of Americans indebted by medical expenses, stand to lose too much if America moves to a single-payer system. They have and will continue to fight tooth-and-nail to keep the money flowing for as long as they can. In this week's episode, host Jonathan Michels speaks with Rita Valenti to talk about the ways that the South is particularly unprepared to withstand the coronavirus pandemic and how Southerners can and must be at the forefront of the Medicare-for-All movement. For the last 40 years, Valenti has been on the front lines of the fight for health equity as a nurse and as a fierce advocate for single payer as a board member of Healthcare—NOW!. For a transcription of this episode, please click here. Further reading: “Southern Workers Unite Around Medicare for All: ‘A Tremendous Liberation From Your Boss'” article about a worker-led campaign to mobilize Southerners around Medicare for All Southern Workers Medicare for All Campaign “Immigrants allege mistreatment by Georgia doctor and whistleblower” investigative report about the Georgian doctor accused of forcibly sterilizing immigrant women at the Irwin Detention Center “Masks, Gowns, and Medicare For All” article about how Medicare for All would benefit frontline healthcare workers

Next week, Medicare for All lead sponsors Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal will introduce a bill that will authorize Medicare to fully cover medical costs for the uninsured until we have a widely available vaccine for COVID-19. The bill would also provide wrap-around coverage for everyone on public or private insurance. We contrast this bill to the other two healthcare proposals competing for a place in the next relief package. The Koch brothers are trashing Medicare for All with a new healthcare campaign. Health insurers continue to make a profit, but are still crying for help from Congress. Show Notes Burglers broke into the Healthcare-NOW office this past week! They stole loose cash and trashed our non-profit. If you're able to help us with our moving costs, you can donate here. Back to the Medicare for All movement! Congress will soon be taking up a "CARES 2" relief package, and the million-dollar question: will there be any relief for the millions of people losing their health insurance (because they lost their jobs)? There are now three Democratic proposals, but it's unclear whether any healthcare reform at all will be able to make it through the Senate (which is a shocking prospect). We're fans option #1: the "Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act," which will be filed by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal. This would empower Medicare to cover every U.S. resident, until a vaccine for COVID-19 is widely available. Every uninsured resident would be covered, and Medicare would also cover co-pays and deductibles for everyone with private or public health insurance. This would achieve the access goals of Medicare for All, but not yet eliminating private insurance - that would have to come next for the program to be sustainable. Contrast this with option #2: the "Worker Health Coverage Protection Act," which is being championed by Democratic leadership, including Nancy Pelosi. This bill would 100% subsidize the premiums for COBRA - this is the law that lets some workers stay on their previous employer's healthcare plan, if it still exists. There is also a new proposal, option #3: the "Medicare Crisis Program Act," filed by Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Joe Kennedy. This would enroll all of the recently unemployed (since the pandemic) in Medicare, although you would still have to pay most of Medicare's co-pays and deductibles (up to 5% of your income). We like this plan better than the COBRA subsidies: way more people would be eligible, and it's not a giveaway to for-profit insurance companies. But it does still leave out the previously uninsured, and the co-pays and deductibles could be worse than COBRA coverage for workers who had really good healthcare previously (like some union members). Now that we've summarized all of these Democratic bills, bad news: it's unclear whether the Senate will agree to any health insurance relief at all. Senate Republicans have signaled that they want to extract all sorts of concessions (liability reform, tax cuts) if they agree to even things like aid for states and municipalities. Democratic leadership in the Senate have a list of priorities, but healthcare isn't one of them. Is it possible that 30-40 million people will lose their health insurance - during an unprecedented health crisis - and Congress will do nothing? Sadly, yes: it's possible. Next up, the Koch brothers are getting in on the healthcare game: the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity have launched a national healthcare campaign. They're saying their plan is the anti-Medicare for All proposal, but they mostly want to deregulate prescription drugs and other provider regulations... including automatically approving any drug approved in Japan or Europe. But not Canada! or the U.K! or Australia! Meanwhile, the health insurance industry is trying to play the American public. At the same time that they're crying wolf to Congress - threatening huge premium incr...

Hi, this is Anna Callahan and you’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: we’re investigating why it’s so broken, imagining what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and reporting on how you can get involved. Today I’m interviewing Rebecca Wood from Mass-Care and Benjamin Day from Healthcare Now. Both are working to pass a Medicare for All-type healthcare system.I think it’s hard to listen to this interview and not feel outraged. Rebecca Wood’s personal story is one that no one should ever have, and it always brings me to tears. It’s only in America that people have heart-wrenching stories like hers. Under Mitt Romney, our state was the first to pass an ObamaCare-like system; we were leaders then and should be leaders now, especially when polls show that a strong majority of Massachusetts residents favor it. State Rep Lindsay Sabadosa has introduced a bill that would enact a single-payer, Medicare for all-like system here in Massachusetts. Why can’t we pass it?You’ll hear two more outrageous things in this interview. The first is that our current healthcare system is quickly becoming so expensive for our state that it is "devouring the governments ability to provide services for anything else.” We must pass single-payer just to be fiscally responsible. The second thing is that the healthcare lobby is now the most powerful lobby acting at the state level. It used to be people in finance meeting in an old bank vault, this is no joke — and now it’s health industry lobbyists that control the state house. About my interviewees: Rebecca Wood is a Community Organizer with Mass-Care, Massachusetts Campaign For Single Payer Health Care. Rebecca told her and Charlie’s story at the introduction of Senator Sanders’ Medicare For All Act of 2017 and testified before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Pathways to Universal Coverage. Prior to working on single-payer health care, she was a park ranger. Benjamin Day is the executive Director of Healthcare-NOW, which is fighting to win a national single-payer healthcare system. He was previously the Executive Director of Mass-Care. Prior to his work at Mass-Care, Ben's background was in labor education and labor research.Without further ado, here is my conversation with Rebecca Wood and Benjamin Day.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/incorruptible_massachusetts)

Nevada's largest and most influential union bucks leadership to support Medicare for All; new study from Yale economists is added to the extensive body of research arguing Medicare for All would save lives and billions of dollars; Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar's healthcare plans finally receive some scrutiny, thanks to Elizabeth Warren Show Notes The Nevada Democratic debate turns into a blood bath! Elizabeth Warren goes after the healthcare plans of Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg - plans that have received almost zero scrutiny during the election cycle. Stephanie takes on the Klobuchar healthcare plan for a public option, which is one paragraph long and offers no details. In that paragraph she says she supports universal health - and links to a tweet of hers about rural hospital funding as evidence. Weird?! She also says that her public option would be based on Medicare... or Medicaid. Kind of an important difference! Ben critiques the Pete Buttigieg "Medicare for All Who Want It" proposal, which involves a public option and what's called "retroactive enrollment" - if you are uninsured and go to a hospital, you will be retroactively enrolled in the public option plan, even if you have to pay the premiums for it. Morning Consult just ran a poll that found only 24% of Americans support a public option when coupled with retroactive enrollment - far less than support for Medicare for All. This completely undermines Buttigieg's claim that Medicare for All is "divisive," and that there is broader support for his plan. Make sure to check out Healthcare-NOW's page on the Presidential candidates' healthcare positions if you haven't already! Also in the world of shocking new polls, NORC released a new survey finding that 8 million Americans have had to launch a crowdfunding campaign to pay for medical bills. Stephanie relates the story of her two friends fighting cancer - one in Denmark with comprehensive, coordinated care, and the other in the U.S. who had to launch a fundraising campaign to pay for the family's cancer care costs. The survey also asks "Who Should be Responsible for Providing Help When Medical Care is Unaffordable?” - although this precludes supporting Medicare for All in the answer, 60% of respondents picked "Government" first - over hospitals, clinics, charities, and doctors - and they picked family and friends last. Americans are not "anti-Government" when it comes to assuming responsibility for our healthcare security. A major new economic analysis of Medicare for All by Yale economists found that Medicare for All would cover everyone, save more than $450 billion per year, and prevent more than 68,000 unnecessary deaths from lacking health insurance. Ben points out that this is the latest in more than 4 decades of economic research on Medicare for All. While Joe Biden has been claiming we don't know how much M4A will cost, and don't have a plan to pay for it, there is far more research and certainty about paying for M4A than there is for his plan. The cost estimates for Biden's and Buttigieg's plans were created by their own consultants, without saying where their data is from or what assumptions they're making, whereas multiple peer-reviewed and credible economic analyses of Medicare for All have been published in the last three years alone. Finally we discuss the Nevada election outcomes! NBC entrance and exit polls found that 62% of Nevada caucus voters support Medicare for All - higher majorities than we saw in Iowa (57%) and New Hampshire (58%). Stephanie points out that this is in spite of the media frenzy over Nevada's Culinary Union attacking Medicare for All. News reports also indicate that the members of the Culinary Union express support for Medicare for All, and overwhelmingly voted for Bernie Sanders. Nevada was the first state where Medicare for All was used in a concerted effort to undermine working-class support for Sanders and Warren.

Ben Day is no stranger to the National Single Payer movement. He currently serves as Executive Director of Healthcare NOW and prior to taking on this role he was the Executive Director of MASS-Care, the Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care, for eight years. Listen as Ben gives a short overview of the differences between a "public option" and "Medicare for All".

This is episode 15, “A Revelation.” My guest, Stephanie Nakajima discusses her personal experiences with health care systems in the United States, Japan, and Denmark. Ms. Nakajima is the Director of Communications at Healthcare-NOW, which advocates for the United States to implement a single-payer health care system. She previously worked as writer, editor, and journalist in Tokyo and covered the Fukushima nuclear disaster and organized crime. She has also worked for the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Danish Refugee Council in Copenhagen. Do not miss episode 15 as Ms. Nakajima experiences as a health care consumer clearly illustrate the benefits of national health programs and why we need single-payer Medicare for All.  

Ben Day is no stranger to the National Single Payer movement. He currently serves as Executive Director of Healthcare NOW and prior to taking on this role he was the Executive Director of MASS-Care, the Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care, for eight years. Ben talks about Healthcare NOW's broad coalition (including National Nurses United) of single payer supporters mobilizing in more than 300 cities across the country to create systematic change from the bottom up which of course includes grassroots educating and organizing. https://www.healthcare-now.org.

Laugh, learn and listen to Nurse Talk Radio on Progressive Voices Tune In. You can download the PV APP @www.progressivevoices.com. This week on the show.... Executive Director for Healthcare NOW, Ben Day. Ben talks about the mission of his organization and the national campaign for Expanded and Improved Medicare for All. And our Healthcare in America segment includes a $69 billion-dollar wedding announcement by CVS and Aetna and another outrageous Kaiser Health News bill of the month. All this and more...

This week saw the 53rd anniversary of Medicare, created, as Benjamin Day of Healthcare-NOW! points out, in the middle of the upheaval and social movement agitation of the 1960s. Today we are in the middle of similar (and also very different) upheaval, and organizers are using it to build support for expanding Medicare to the rest of the population. I spoke with Day about the building of a Medicare for All caucus in Congress, the upcoming elections, and why street protests are still going to be important to the struggle.   I think that there is going to be a few phases of this movement. Right now, there is definitely a focus on the elections and trying to get…really pressuring all candidates to embrace Medicare for All. After this moment is over…and it looks like we will gain quite a few Medicare for All supporters in Congress just through the election process…but, after that, it is going to be sort of another social movement fight to get sitting reps to embrace it like happened last year. I think what that looks like will really vary depending on whether Democrats retake the House or the Senate. We are kind of preparing the way for that. A lot of our work has been focused on these elections and pressuring candidates when they are most vulnerable and when they are most accountable, I think. But, Phase Two is really going to be doing very targeted organizing the districts of Democrats who should be on board with this bill and they are not yet. Interviews for Resistance is a syndicated series of interviews with organizers, agitators and troublemakers, available twice weekly as text and podcast. You can now subscribe on iTunes! Previous interviews here

  Air Date: 6/26/2018 Today we take a look at the misguided transformation of our thinking about health care that causes us to accept the idea of it being a market-based commodity, who continues to support this idea and why it continues to make suckers of us all Be part of the show! Leave a message at 202-999-3991   Episode Advertisers: Audiobook: What Truth Sounds Like   Donate or become a Member to support the show!  Visit: https://www.patreon.com/BestOfTheLeft    SHOW NOTES Ch. 1: Natalie Shure on how neoliberals turned healthcare from a right to a commodity - Citations Needed - Air Date 6-21-18   Ch. 2: Why Democrats Resist Medicare For All - @TZHRJ - Air Date 03-12-18   Ch. 3: Explaining Medicare Extra and the reason corporate Democrats want to save employer-based health insurance - Doomed - Air Date 3-10-18   Ch. 4: Healthcare isn't something people should have to choose to spend money on - Citations Needed - Air Date 6-21-18   Ch. 5: Join Your Local Single-Payer Advocacy Group via @HCNow - Best of the Left Activism   Ch. 6:  Elizabeth Rozenthal explains why the US health care system is so bad - Intercepted - Air Date 6-13-18   Ch. 7: Final comments on why single-payer health care is good for gender equality   TAKE ACTION Find & Join your Local Single-Payer Advocacy Group via Healthcare NOW  CALL/WRITE/TWEET your members of Congress to push them to publicly support the Medicare for All Act before the Midterms: House Co-sponsors Senate Co-sponsors FOR READING/SHARING The Midterm Elections and Medicare For All(Healthcare NOW!) Is Medicare-for-all a winning message for midterm elections? DSCC chairman weighs in(CBS) Why So Many Democrats Are Embracing Single-Payer Health Care(The Atlantic) "Medicare for All" is a winner in Democratic primaries(Axios) Single-Payer Health Care Is The Key To Democratic Victory In 2018(WBUR) Written by BOTL Communications Director Amanda Hoffman    MUSIC: Opening Theme: Loving Acoustic Instrumental by John Douglas Orr  UpUpUp and Over - The Balloonist (Blue Dot Sessions) When We Set Out - Arc and Crecent (Blue Dot Sessions) Donder - Darby (Blue Dot Sessions) Wingspan - Bayou Birds (Blue Dot Sessions) Planting Flags - K4 (Blue Dot Sessions) Voicemail Music: Low Key Lost Feeling Electro by Alex Stinnent Closing Music: Upbeat Laid Back Indie Rock by Alex Stinnent   Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Thanks for listening! Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Support the show via Patreon Listen on iTunes | Stitcher| Spotify| Alexa Devices| +more Check out the BotL iOS/AndroidApp in the App Stores! Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Review the show on iTunesand Stitcher!

The Republican-Led House Ways and Means Committee is Scheduled to Announce Their Tax and Spending Package Today as They Rush to Complete Work in the Few Weeks Remaining Before the Thanksgiving Recess.On this episode of "Fault Lines," hosts Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan discuss Congressional Republicans' daunting task of passing Donald Trump's signature tax and spending legislation before the Thanksgiving recess. News reports predict that the House Ways and Means Committee will release the Republican tax bill today. This after a delay intended to round up reluctant Republican votes--mainly from Blue states like California, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey whose constituents would face significant tax hikes if the proposed elimination of the state and local tax deduction (SALT) is included. Many Republicans remain leery of raising taxes on their constituents the year before facing reelection. Twenty such Representatives defected during a key vote last week, leaving the GOP with a slim two-vote margin, and even more Republicans could vote no on a motion for final passage. Garland and Lee will also discuss the ongoing mainstream media coverage of social media ads, incomplete investigations, and other obscure matters. This while largely ignoring many of the most critical challenges facing everyday Americans including war and peace, the economy and jobs, healthcare, education, and more. The hosts and guests will analyze top news stories and issues including the situations in Yemen and North Carolina, the Democratic National Committee's recent decisions exclude prominent progressives, and the state of healthcare in the USA as well as after predicted cuts to Medicare and Medicaid under the Republican budget plans. Scheduled guests include: Jacqueline Luqman Co-Founder of Luqman Media, Co-host of “Coffee, Current Events & Politics” and “Brick by Brick” topic: mainstream media' refusal to discuss real issues; Paul Kawika Martin Peace Action Senior Director for Policy and Political Affairs on legislation topic: North Korea & Yemen; Benjamin Day Executive Director of Healthcare-NOW topic: the state of healthcare in the USA now, and GOP proposed cuts to Medicare & Medicaid; Dr. Bosworth - Topic: Sleep; Ted Rall - award winning columnist, syndicated editorial cartoonist, and author topic: mainstream media's investigation mania; Bryan Burrough - Author and Correspondent for Vanity Fair, topic: his book "Days Of Rage."

This week on Love (and Revolution) Radio, we interview Dr. Margaret Flowers about the new HOPE Campaign - Health Over Profit For Everyone - to make a national improved Medicare for All healthcare system the best and only and most sane choice for ending the healthcare crisis. Sign up for our weekly email: http://www.riverasun.com/love-and-revolution-radio/ About Our Guest: Dr. Margaret Flowers M.D. is a pediatrician and mother from Baltimore, MD. Margaret left medical practice in 2007 to advocate full-time for single payer health care. She served as Congressional Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program and is on the board of Healthcare-Now!. She is co-director of ItsOurEconomy.us. She has organized and participated in protests for health care, peace and economic justice which have included arrests for nonviolent resistance. Margaret is also the cofounder of Popular Resistance.org and the co-host of Clearing the FOG Radio. Related Links: Health Over Profit for Everyone (HOPE) http://healthoverprofit.org/ HOPE National Calls http://healthoverprofit.org/category/campaign-updates/ HOPE Twitter https://twitter.com/H_O_P4E HOPE Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Health-Over-Profit-for-Everyone-HOPE-1667394180226992/ ADA Capitol Crawl http://www.historybyzim.com/2013/09/capitol-crawl-americans-with-disabilities-act-of-1990/ Music by: "Love and Revolution" by Diane Patterson and Spirit Radio www.dianepatterson.org About Your Co-hosts: Sherri Mitchell (Penobscot) is an Indigenous rights attorney, writer and activist who melds traditional life-way teachings into spirit-based movements. Follow her at Sherri Mitchell – Wena’gamu’gwasit: https://www.facebook.com/sacredinstructions/timeline Rivera Sun is a novelist and nonviolent mischief-maker. She is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection, Billionaire Buddha, and Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars. She is also the social media coordinator and nonviolence trainer for Campaign Nonviolence and Pace e Bene. Her essays on social justice movements are syndicated on by PeaceVoice, and appear in Truthout and Popular Resistance. http://www.riverasun.com/

Edition #744 Obamacare is not enough Ch. 1: Intro - Theme: A Fond Farewell, Elliott Smith  Ch. 2: Act 1: Fighting In The Trenches For Reasonable Health Care - David Feldman Show - Air Date 7-29-13 Ch. 3: Song 1: Manifesto II - Nahko and Medicine for the People Ch. 4: Act 2: Dave Gregory Doesn't Even Know What He's Sure He Knows - CounterSpin - Air Date 7-12-13 Ch. 5: Song 2: We could be friends - Freelance Whales Ch. 6: Act 3: WTF: One Hospital Charges $8k...Another $38k? - Thom Hartmann - Air Date: 05-09-13 Ch. 7: Song 3: Better of dead - Elton John Ch. 8: Act 4: New Rules On Disclosing Medical Bills - This Week in Blackness - Air Date 5-8-13 Ch. 9: Song 4: Enter the Blackness (This Week in Blackness Theme) [feat. Willie Evans Jr., Elon James White & Aaron Rand Freeman] - Jasiri X Ch. 10: Act 5: Implementing Single Payer Health Care - David Feldman Show - Air Date 7-29-13 Ch. 11: Song 5: Simplify - Dan Becker and the Tourists Ch. 12: Act 6: HealthCare-Now.org - UnFuck it Up Project Ch. 13: Song 6: I didn't fuck it up - Katie Goodman Ch. 14: Act 7: Just Why are Republicans so Against Obamacare? - Thom Hartmann - Air Date: 08-08-13 Ch. 15: Song 7: Don't look back in anger - Oasis Ch. 16: Act 8: ObamaCareNado Attacks America - The Young Turks - Air Date: 07-21-13 Ch. 17: Song 8: I can help - Billy Swan Ch. 18: Act 9: Evolution Of For-Profit Medical Care - David Feldman Show - Air Date 7-29-13 Voicemails: Ch. 19: We need to look at multiple causes of kids having difficulty in school - ? in Salt Lake City Ch. 20: We needed to hear more about student loan companies - Brian from Redding, PA Ch. 21: When prison is a step up - Chris from New York Leave a message at 202-999-3991 Voicemail Music:  Loud Pipes - Ratatat Ch. 22: Final comments on my new exciting idea on how you can help share activism events like never before Closing Music: Here We Are - Patrick Park Activism: http://www.healthcare-now.org  Information for this segment can be found at: http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-resources  http://www.hhs.gov/opa/affordable-care-act/index.html  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/medicare-part-e---everybo_b_280687.html  Sponsored by the UnFuck it Up Project: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Unfuck-It-Up/196389490396988 Katie Goodman, creator: http://katiegoodman.com  Katie Klabusich, director: http://katiespeak.com  Produced by: Jay! Tomlinson Thanks for listening! Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Check out the BotL iOS/Android App in the App Stores! Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Review the show on iTunes!

This page and podcast are produced and paid for by Tell Somebody. Is the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act cause for celebration?  Is Chief Justice John Roberts deserving of praise for a wise decision and an avoidance of the appearance of partisanship?  Most reasonable people agree that the ACA is an improvement from the previous status quo, even if it still leaves millions uninsured and keeps putting too much money in the pockets of insurers and other for-profit interests.  If this really is the best we can do in current political reality, what does that say about our acceptance of that "reality." On the July 3, 2012 edition of Tell Somebody, Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare-Now, & It's Our Economy gave her views. Click on the pod icon above or the .mp3 filename below to listen to the show, or right-click and choose "save target as" to save a copy of the audio file to your computer.  You can also subscribe to the podcast, for free, at the iTunes store or your podcast directory. If you have any comments or questions about the show or any problems accessing the files, send an email to: mail@tellsomebody.us