Healthcare Is A Human Right
Without life, there can be no chance for liberty and no pursuits of any kind. Therefore, we recognize healthcare as a human right that must be protected if others are to ever be freely exercised. These truths become ever more self-evident in dire times such as our own and the duty to secure this right becomes most crucial.
Anything less than enacting universal healthcare is sentencing many to perish and more to suffer. This unnecessary suffering exists to maintain high profits for a select few. It will always be more profitable to treat sickness instead of cure it, and to insure the healthy instead of those who need care. This makes it impossible for markets to create sensible or efficient healthcare systems. The U.S. pays the most for healthcare worldwide, but receives some of the worst outcomes. We must transition to people-first healthcare, leaving the market out of our doctors offices and medical decisions.
We reject bad-faith notions that we lose any meaningful choices in transitioning away from private healthcare. Our insurance plans are chosen by our workplaces. Our doctors are chosen by pre-selected “networks.” Our covered treatments and prescriptions are limited by the ever shifting policies aiming to lower costs and push out high-risk members. The system bottlenecks after deductibles are met, creating long waits for care. Obamacare siphoned working class money into private insurers' hands while forcing us into the same overpriced and insufficient plans. A “Public Option” will pool high-risk individuals into plans with high costs, while private competitors will profit from forcing the risk onto taxpayers. In the same way a casino gives choices, insurers have stacked the odds in favor of the house, only it’s our health being gambled with. The only answer is to flip the tables.
Medicare for All
Medicare for All will give us the freedom to choose our doctors, providers, services, and even to buy supplemental private insurance. It can also protect these freedoms from being held hostage by our employers, insurance companies, politicians, or any form of bureaucratic testing.
We believe that we can secure our right to life and so promise to tirelessly fight for a Medicare for All plan that at minimum provides:
Universal coverage for everyone, under a single federal health insurance program, without exceptions.
Full coverage of all services (Medical/Dental/Vision/Mental/Reproductive) with freedom to choose your doctors.
Dedicated public funding of the program, ensuring it is always fully free at the point of service, with no fees, no copays, no deductibles, no premiums, and no surprise bills.
Equal access to all medical services and treatments, with protections from insurance companies, politicians, bureaucrats, or others that threaten to come between you and your health needs.
Job priority and severance for those whose livelihoods may be affected by the transition away from privatized health insurance.
A Pandemic Response for the People
The weak and insufficient response of our government to the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the virus needlessly spreading and the tragic deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The only choice left to many is the gross amplification of the familiar lesser of two evils: either sacrifice health and safety or sacrifice economic survival. As unemployment increases to new highs, who will have the economic power to remain healthy, buy goods, and afford housing?
Capitalism is collapsing on itself again while donor-bought representatives work to insulate the economic elite even further from the material reality of this catastrophe. We must take action to survive the conditions thrown upon us. We are the working class majority, abandoned by the institutions we have built and supported, fighting a simultaneous pandemic and depression.
We believe we must unite and fight to secure the following demands:
A moratorium on all evictions, foreclosures, rents and debt collections with no penalties or interest accruing.
A monthly survival payment to all citizens of $2,000 dollars retroactive to March 2020.
An expansion of Medicare to cover everyone needing medical services during the pandemic.
A jobs protection act, to ensure that all businesses receiving government loans protect the positions of workers who must stay home to care for family, or due to considerations of public and personal safety.