'We Need Medicare for All': Massive Coronavirus Job Losses Expose Obvious Failure of...

[guillaumeb]

'We Need Medicare for All': Massive Coronavirus Job Losses Expose Obvious Failure of Employer-Based Insurance

From the article:

After millions of Americans abruptly lost their jobs this month due to the coronavirus, resulting in a record-shattering 3.28 million unemployment claims in one week, Medicare for All advocates are pointing to the crisis as the latest and clearest evidence that the U.S. must abandon its for-profit healthcare system once and for all......

Highlighting the March 2020 spike in a graph showing U.S. jobless claims over the past five decades, advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) issued a reminder that "under Medicare for All, nobody would have to worry about health coverage after losing their job."...

As Fordham University professor Ashar Foley wrote in an op-ed at Common Dreams Wednesday, the explosion of jobless claims and the resulting crisis of uninsured and underinsured Americans which is likely to follow is just one way in which the coronavirus pandemic has proven the private, for-profit health insurance model to be unsustainable and dangerous:

To read more:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/26/we-need-medicare-all-massive-coronavirus-job-losses-expose-obvious-failure-employer?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email

To those who have objected to MFA, citing the supposed unaffordability of it, my response is that the US cannot afford to continue on its current course.

[CottonBear]

1. My co-worker hasn't lost her job, but can't work w/out childcare.

She’s not laid off. She just can’t come to work because she has no childcare.

[guillaumeb]

2. And the right will insist that business has responsibility to provide anything.

Like Jeff Bezos refusing to provide paid sick leave to his workers.

[CottonBear]

3. Sick leave, health care and vacation need to be rights separate from one's work.n/t

[guillaumeb]

4. FDR suggested an economic Bill of Rights.

In the 1930s.

And some in the GOP suggest bringing back child labor.

[cynatnite]

5. I'm rethinking this as well...

There are still complicated issues that would have to be resolved in order to make a workable system, but having a pandemic added to the equation makes it all the more difficult.

Ireland nationalized their entire healthcare industry because of Covid-19. They say it's only temporary, but their citizens may demand to keep it.

[guillaumeb]

7. The US system is ranked 37th.

If it were ranked 1st, or even in the top 5, an argument could be made that it works. But it does not work, and this pandemic exposes one of the biggest reasons. Tying healthcare access to a job ties the worker to that job.

And another huge factor is the tremendous waste in dollars that occurs because billions in premium money is paid out in executive salaries and stock payouts. Billions that could be used to lower the cost of healthcare.

[Indykatie]

6. The Rallying Cry Should Be We Need Universal Healthcare But Bernie Is Fixed On His Solution

being the only solution. It's typical I think of his my way or the highway reputation.

[guillaumeb]

8. Biden has expressed more support for MFA.

And if there is even a tiny bright spot to this situation, if it leads to MFA that would be better for the country.

[alarimer]

9. Oh, but we can't afford it.

We’re going to bailout banks and airlines and throw a pittance to the unemployed and somehow we have money for that. Progressives are nearly 100% correct. Just look at how quickly even nonprogressive politicians start beating the drum for relief for all the folks affected by this virus. It’s obvious that the social safety should have been beefed up years ago.

[guillaumeb]

10. Agreed.

When people say that we cannot afford it, the only response is that we cannot NOT afford it.

[BeckyDem]

11. Lobbyists are the reason we don't have it.

The answer to our health care crisis is clear. We propose a publicly financed, non-profit single-payer national health program that would fully cover medical care for all Americans.

https://pnhp.org/

[guillaumeb]

12. Agreed.

Lobbyists representing the very rich. The rich who profit from this profit centered system.

[BeckyDem]

13. Yes and the corp media who ignores the elephant in the room for them.

The idea there is a liberal media is a terrible joke. Pundits who try and tell you what to think, its pathetic.

[guillaumeb]

14. Creating the myth that there is a liberal media

is one of the GOP's biggest achievements.

It laid the foundation for the idea of fake news, when in fact, the fake news comes from the right wing.

[BeckyDem]

15. +1