Medicare for All: Just the Beginning of the Progressive Revolution

Medicare for All, the standard bearer of progressive legislation, has a growing posse. But if we expect the revolution to take off, the Democratic groupees who have jumped onboard the Bernie bandwagon have to commit to the whole liberal philosophy. If they don’t, progressivism among establishment Dems risks fading into just another political fad diet that failed when the country didn’t bother to change anything else about its lifestyle.

Seventeen Democratic Senators are backing Bernie’s Medicare for All bill, and most of those signed on the same day, twenty-four years after Bernie first proposed single-payer healthcare legislation. This is sudden, and this is big. To anyone who thinks progress is inevitable, albeit a bit tardy these days, this is wildly exciting.

Let’s be clear, there are Democrats who won’t budge and the bill probably won’t pass any time soon with a GOP-controlled Senate. But government-provided healthcare is polling at a 60% approval rating, and who knows what insurrections the President might incite. And if Kamala Harris being the first to back the bill wasn’t enough, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand’s early support cemented the issue as one that isn’t going away for a long time.

What was one of Bernie’s “ponies” last week is suddenly looming as the major policy issue of 2020. From a progressive standpoint, this has the potential to be the beginning of something huge — hyuuuge, even — and it is absolutely worth celebrating .

But is this what progressives have been waiting for? When the old-guard Democrats finally give over to actual progress? Is this early roster of Medicare for All supporters going to similarly support proposals on free public education, prison and sentencing reform, and sustainable minimum wage?

Given the central importance of universal healthcare in a progressive vision of society, it’s tempting to say yes. Health has such a huge impact on every aspect of life that healthcare becomes the keystone to society, simultaneously preventing the whole place from crumbling while also being held aloft by every other stone. Healthcare keeps us working, but also needs to thrive in an economy and grow through education and rely on a robust populace to support the sick.

Which is exactly why Medicare for All support can’t be the only litmus for progressive voters, and politicians claiming the progressive label for themselves will have to be held to task. Being progressive means taking a critical look at what problems need solutions and an intersectional approach to devising those solutions; “fixing” healthcare is not so simple as supporting a single bill.

The underlying issue of healthcare is figuring out how to pay for such a huge bill, which is all the more daunting if we are talking about a single payer doing the paying. Any practical solution will have to reduce costs, and doing so means treating issues traditionally outside the realm of medicine as healthcare concerns.

So long as millions are being spent to treat the citizens of Flint, safe infrastructure is a healthcare concern.

So long as human health can be affected by hunger and malnutrition, the minimum wage is a healthcare concern.

So long as addiction is a health issue, ending the war on drugs is a healthcare concern.

So long as violence and poverty are detrimental to health, social justice and racial inequality are healthcare concerns.

So long as society needs more doctors, free and equal access to education is a healthcare concern.

So long as storms become more and more deadly, combatting climate change is a healthcare concern.

So long as HMO and pharmaceutical lobbyists put profits over patients, campaign finance reform is a healthcare concern.

If any of the Senators who back Medicare for All end up not supporting other progressive causes, then they don’t really support the idea of healthcare as a human right, and they could even be hurting attempts to achieve it in the long run. Committing to any healthcare bill but not the progressive solutions that would ease pressure on the healthcare system is dooming the bill to failure.

Supporting Medicare for All simply because it is popular or for the optics betrays what true progressivism is. Progressivism is a whole approach to society as a system that can be repaired and improved, but always has to be kept in balance.

What these early Democrats are absolutely correct in saying is that healthcare is a human right. When we talk about “fixing” healthcare, the most important metric has to be the health of the American people. We need to be healthy to live and pursue our happiness, so establishing healthcare as a basic human right is an absolute necessity.

We’re off to a good start. A good very early start. We have a lot to follow through on if we’re going to see the systemic change progressivism promises.

John Sheehy is a writer with a linguistics degree, an editor with a journalism degree, and a freelancer based out of Brooklyn