Friend,

Ninety years ago next month, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, and said “This law…represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete.”

FDR hoped to build on Social Security’s old age insurance with universal health care, education, and disability programs.

Sixty years ago this week, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law, building on FDR’s cornerstone.

Now, with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, millions of Americans who currently rely on Medicaid will lose care, and the bill adds so much to the deficit that if Congress doesn’t act, it will trigger an automatic $500 billion cut to Medicare.

American healthcare is at a crossroads―we can either go back, to a country where health care is a luxury good that is out of reach for seniors and working-class Americans, or we can take the next step in the New Deal and fight for Medicare for All.

Medicare for seniors was never the end goal. As Robert Ball, the longest-serving Social Security Commissioner in history, explained:

“[A]ll of us who developed Medicare and fought for it… had been advocates of universal national health insurance. We all saw insurance for the elderly as a fallback position, which we advocated solely because it seemed to have the best chance politically….[W]e expected Medicare to be a first step toward universal national health insurance, perhaps with ‘Kiddicare’ as another step.”

Perhaps, like the people who developed Medicare, we can take steps in the right direction by lowering Medicare’s eligibility age, or expand CHIP into a full-fledged ‘Kiddiecare. But right now, we are going backwards―and it’s absolutely imperative that we turn around, and keep marching toward healthcare for everyone.

Our coalition has already sent nearly 75,000 messages to Congress in recent weeks. Can you join us by demanding that we take the next step in the New Deal and enact Medicare for All?

Thank you,

Dave Driscoll
The Sanders Institute