After hundreds of people across the country mobilized to pressure the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee to include a nurse witness, I was invited to testify about how Medicare for All is the only legislative proposal that will truly fix our country’s health care crisis. You can read my full testimony here.

Including a nurse in the hearing was a huge win in itself — something we could not have achieved without you. Because of our seat at the table, I was able to make several arguments that would not have been heard otherwise.

My argument was simple: Medicare for All is the only policy that will guarantee health care to all people, regardless of ability to pay, and will control costs by vastly simplifying a complex and wasteful administrative bureaucracy.

I was also able to tell the committee that unions representing a historic 9 million union workers now support Medicare for All, and that nearly every major strike this year has been over health care. Indeed, health care justice is an issue that impacts all working people.

It was also important that I had an opportunity to explain how rural health care would be significantly strengthened by Medicare for All, and that the bill even includes a special budget for constructing facilities and hiring additional staff in underserved areas.

But the influence of Big Pharma and the insurance industry was readily apparent:

Some members of Congress repeatedly parroted the industry’s talking points verbatim. I sat directly next to one witness, Douglas Holtz-Eakin (pictured below, in the blue tie), whose organization has taken tens of millions of dollars directly from Big Pharma to block any attempts at health care reform.

As I made clear in the hearing: so long as the profit-motive is kept in the driver’s seat, care will continue to be denied to those who need it and people will die. Profiteering corporations are prepared to spend whatever amount of money it takes to ensure no reform advances.

In the coming year we plan to intensify our efforts to go after the culprits behind our broken health care system. I hope you’ll join our movement — either this month or in the new year. We can’t win without you.

In solidarity,

Jean Ross
President
National Nurses United