Medicare for All: States Must Lead NOW!
In the words of Napoleon Hill, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
COVID-19 is a national and international emergency at a level never experienced by the current occupants of our planet. As we write this we are at a global number of 713,171 positive-test cases and 33,597 deaths. In the United States, we have 135,029 positive-test cases and 2,370 deaths since January 21, 2020. (CNN, 3/29/20 at 1500 PDST).
We are at a moment in time where a visionary governor from any number of states could step up and declare — within the context of a state emergency, lacking any significant help from our Federal Government, yet receiving plenty of ridicule, obstacles, misinformation, threats, and personal vendetta from the current administration — that her/his state is promptly going to create a universal healthcare system for reasons of short-term necessity, long-term survival, economic crisis and moral clarity for their own states residents, with a goal to create an exemplary model for other states to study and replicate as a pathway to a national/federal Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Healthcare Plan. That governor could become a hero practically overnight and, possibly, President of the United States in 2024.
We are the leaders of One Payer States, Inc. (OPS), a 501(c)(4) non profit, founded in 2009. We are a national organization of healthcare, education, social work, and business professionals dedicated to universal healthcare solutions to make the United States the leading healthcare provider in the world. (Many of our leaders have been fighting for this same cause since the 1970s.) Since 2009, we have been meeting regularly to share our research and legislative findings, and to brainstorm with each other on how to deliver the most efficient and effective non-profit, universal, publicly-financed, privately-delivered health care system anywhere in the world. Consistent with our federalist Constitution and reform history, our goal is to model such a solution at the state level before adopting as a nation.
Since our formation, OPS has consistently backed Medicare-for-all campaigns at the local, state, and national levels. OPS has become a significant political force that will engage to influence the healthcare reform debate at these three levels. Our organization is uniquely poised to play an expanded role in educating, organizing, and mobilizing our member and partner organizations. Therefore, we have chosen to unite OPS around a three-track strategy: • state-based universal healthcare (SBUHC) legislation and citizen initiatives; • congressional enabling legislation in support of state-level campaigns (HR 5010) ; and • national Medicare-for-All legislation (HR 1384 and S.1129).
Our country has several states that are ready to implement Medicare for All at the state level now! The evidence is overwhelming that our profit-first healthcare system will not be able to survive this pandemic without first destroying our economy. (See Wendell Potter, “Deadly Spin”) They will try to pass on to us, their newly outraged subscribers, the astronomical costs of this emergency. Outrageous costs that include waste, fraud, abuse, bloated ad campaigns, obscene CEO and sub-CEO salaries, hundreds of thousands of computer-based bureaucrats; people who only undermine the actual delivery of healthcare. They will try to pass these scandalous costs on to people and companies who cannot absorb them. Millions will be denied the healthcare they desperately need. Millions more will go bankrupt. That is why we must move to the proven solution of Improved Medicare for All — NOW! We must take care of our people and stop the bleeding of our communities, states, and nation by the Medical-Industrial Complex “Four Horseman”: BIG Insurance, BIG Pharma, BIG Hospitals, and BIG Medical Device Manufacturers.
Below are the states whose governors could easily implement current healthcare legislative plans. All that they lack is the will to do it. Passionate healthcare leaders have already done most of the footwork for them. Which state will lead us into the future where we can all face a pandemic like this knowing that we will not be fighting this battle at the expense of any Americans?
In peace and solidarity from the One Payer States, Inc. Board with input from our many members,
Charles Pennacchio, PHD, President
Michael Huntington, MD, Secretary
Kathryn Lewandowsky, BSN, RN,Treasurer
For more information on your state’s progress in introducing a Universal, Medicare for All health plan and to see how you can help us make it a reality for all Americans, please visit our website at www.onepayerstates.org or go to the links below.
Maine-Legislative Health care Committee
