[ [link removed] ]Democratic Socialists for Medicare for All

Dear John,

Hello and thank you for reading our LAST issue of 2019! Check out the
[ [link removed] ]#DontBargainWithOurLives campaign on Twitter, tell your UK friends to
vote Labour on Dec. 12, and get ready for another Weekend of Action in
collaboration with the DSA for Bernie campaign coming in January. See you
in 2020!

In solidarity,

Dustin Guastella
DSA Medicare for All Campaign Committee

 

[2]BANNER: All In: The DSA M4A Newsletter

 

As we head into 2020, we have everything to gain and the polls to back it
up: [ [link removed] ]support for Sen. Sanders is growing in key states like New
Hampshire, and voters consistently say he’s the candidate they trust most
to enact Medicare for All in office. This is an unprecedented moment in
history where the United States could see a Sanders presidency, and
Medicare for All is closer to reality than ever before. Working alongside
dozens of other coalition organizations, thousands of socialists in DSA
chapters across the country have spent countless hours this year
organizing events, door-knocking, phone banking and talking to their
friends and neighbors about Medicare for All. We know we’ll have to fight
much harder in 2020, but it’s clear our hard work is paying off. Please
remember to forward this issue to everyone you know interested in Medicare
for All and in Bernie's political revolution and [ [link removed] ]get them to subscribe
so we can hit the ground running in January.

Big pay-offs have come lately in the form of major union support for
Sanders and his Medicare for All plan. [ [link removed] ]National Nurses United endorsed
Bernie for president in November, counting his “trailblazing leadership”
on “Medicare for All” as one of the reasons for their endorsement. NNU is
a leader in the fight for Medicare for All nationally, and support from
the nation’s largest nurses union speaks volumes about which candidate has
the trust of working-class people to enact Medicare for All and
fundamentally disrupt the status quo.

Nurses aren’t the only ones backing Bernie — [ [link removed] ]United Teachers Los
Angeles, the second-largest teachers’ local in the country, overwhelmingly
voted to support Sanders’ run for president. Union members voted to
endorse Sanders not only because he has “the most comprehensive,
progressive plan for public education among the candidates,” but also
because his platform “aligns with our values on a range of issues,
including rebuilding the US labor movement and winning Medicare for All.”

NNU and UTLA are the two most recent large unions to endorse Bernie, with
more joining daily. Shoutout to the APWU of New Hampshire, who endorsed
Sanders on December 6th, and IBEW Local 1634 in Iowa, who also recently
endorsed. These unions follow the lead of the [ [link removed] ]United Electrical, Radio
and Machine Workers of America, which was the first major union to endorse
him in August. The fact that more than 150,000 nurses, 36,000 electrical
workers and machinists, 34,000 public school teachers, New Hampshire
postal workers and many other locals have endorsed Bernie Sanders and his
Medicare for All plan sends a crystal clear message about who is truly on
the side of working people and committed to taking the profit motive out
of healthcare.

Contrast those endorsements to what happened in the stock market when
Elizabeth Warren announced her “Medicare for All” plan: [ [link removed] ]managed-care
and hospital stocks actually rose more than 5 percent after notably
slumping for the first nine months of 2019. Capital knows that Warren is
no threat, which means she is no friend of ours.

In 2020 we need to maintain the momentum we’ve built while remaining
uncompromising and steadfast in our demands: we’re fighting for Medicare
for All and nothing less.

If you have friends, family members or colleagues who are interested in
keeping up with the campaign, [ [link removed] ]tell them to sign up here to receive All
In straight to their inbox. Thanks for reading, and see you in 2020!

From the campaign

News from the M4A blog and the broader campaign

[ [link removed] ]Raised fist with rose silhouetted in black on red background. Text:
Don't Bargain With Our Lives Democratic Socialists for Medicare for All

Tell us why you’re fighting for Medicare for All through our
#DontBargainWithOurLives campaign! We’re encouraging union members and DSA
chapters to upload short videos of themselves talking about why Medicare
for All is so important. [ [link removed] ]Fill out this form to share your video with
us and we’ll help promote it when the campaign kicks off TODAY, December
9. Let’s flood social media with #DontBargainWithOurLives videos and
messages! We want to make it clear that the labor movement isn’t just
fighting for their own benefits — they’re fighting with all of us for
Medicare for All.

A statement from the campaign: A public option is not a solution, and
Bernie is the only Medicare for All candidate. November’s Democratic
debate was especially illuminating because it finally laid bare what so
many Medicare for All advocates already knew: Elizabeth Warren will not
fight for truly comprehensive single-payer healthcare any time soon.
Despite Warren’s claims, we know the public option is [ [link removed] ]actually no
option at all because it carves out space for private insurance companies
and would exacerbate the inequalities that exist in our current system.
The public option is no yellow brick road to single-payer, and the only
candidate committed to [ [link removed] ]fighting for Medicare for All from day one in
office is Bernie Sanders.

Views from the other side: a public health and policy professor
[ [link removed] ]attended a meeting about healthcare hosted by the Koch-funded
“Manhattan Institute” and recaps what she saw. “The bad news is they were
planting seeds of misdirection in the audience members’ minds that could
eventually make their way to the airwaves or to political debates,” writes
Dr. Naomi Zewde, an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Public
Health & Health Policy at the City University of New York. “The good news
is they are forced to respond to this growing movement, and that they have
no good answers or even good questions.”

Another Weekend of Action is coming on January 18-19, 2020! [ [link removed] ]In
collaboration with the DSA for Bernie campaign, we’re asking DSA chapters
to host canvassing events, town halls, or use a variety of other tactics
to grow support for Medicare for All and Bernie Sanders’ campaign [ [link removed] ](see
our organizing guide for ideas or [ [link removed] ]check out what chapters did earlier
this year for a WoA in June). Be on the lookout for more information soon,
but for now, save the dates!

News

Related news articles, essays, articles from outlets beyond the campaign

#VoteLabourDecember12: We stand in solidarity with our friends in the
Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn’s party has pledged [ [link removed] ]to keep the National
Health Service safe from further austerity, and we hope the British people
will vote Labour to preserve the healthcare system we’re so desperately
fighting for in our own country. [ [link removed] ]As American-expat Rob Delaney says,
“even in its underfunded state, [the NHS is] still so vastly superior. You
don’t want what I grew up with.” [Bonus: [ [link removed] ]Read Meagan Day’s piece in
Jacobin, “The Transatlantic Health-Care Struggle,” about what Britain’s
struggle to preserve the NHS means for Medicare for All advocates here at
home.]

DSA members have been canvassing for Medicare for All for months, and they
consistently find one thing: people love the idea of M4A once they learn
more about it. [ [link removed] ]Liza Featherstone talked to DSA members in chapters
across the country to get their perspective on what real people are saying
and thinking about Medicare for All. “The questions people ask about
Medicare for All aren’t the same ones the pundit class imagines, nor, in
the context of an engaged conversation about their health care
experiences, do their objections tend to be fatal,” she writes. Keep these
lessons learned by other organizers in mind when you hit the streets!

Healthcare industry groups and lobbyists are using politicians as pawns to
wage war against Medicare for All in the pages of the nation’s newspapers.
[ [link removed] ]Documents obtained by Medicare for All Now and given to The Washington
Post reveal that lawmakers in several states published op-eds criticizing
Medicare for All that were written with help from anti-M4A lobbyists. The
lawmakers did not disclose they wrote the pieces with the help of
lobbyists, and the lobbyists themselves were cagey when asked who they
were working for — although it seems likely it’s Partnership for America’s
Health Care Future, a powerhouse group funded by private healthcare
interests.

Chapter spotlight

A look at what locals are doing around the country

Lehigh Valley DSA members [ [link removed] ]celebrated a victory in November after the
Bethlehem City Council unanimously adopted a resolution supporting
Medicare for All. The chapter mobilized by encouraging members to attend
the city council meeting and contacting council members to urge their
support for the measure. The members who attended the meeting said in
part: “No one should have to go bankrupt keeping themselves healthy. A
society where people have to resort to GoFundMe to purchase insulin or pay
for operations is not a healthy one.”

Bethlehem now joins cities such as Cambridge, Detroit, Los Angeles,
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Seattle in passing resolutions
in support of Medicare for All. Keep the pressure on!

DSA members Ben Fong (Phoenix DSA and Medicare for All steering committee
member) and Liz Deere (co-chair of the Central Arkansas DSA) [ [link removed] ]were
interviewed for this piece in The Atlantic that chronicles the meteoric
rise in popularity of Medicare for All within the Democratic party. The
writer sums up M4A’s popularity in part by saying, “Medicare for All is an
easy-to-understand, decisive departure from what [Bernie] Sanders calls a
‘cruel and dysfunctional’ health-care system. So what if it’s socialist?”
For us socialists, that’s the main selling point!

Social media

The best stuff from our feeds

🔥 [ [link removed] ]The seventh level (or maybe the eighth? Possibly the ninth?),
specifically

👊 [ [link removed] ]James Adomian, thank you for this

💃 [ [link removed] ]When we win Medicare for All, everyone will be having the time of
their lives

🍽️ [ [link removed] ]The dinner argument to end all dinner arguments

🚗 [ [link removed] ]We found a photo of Liz Warren’s healthcare plan


 
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