True Progress: How Bernie Sanders Forever Changed The Healthcare Dialogue
The progressive movement, while having many set-backs, has achieved something magical.
On Tuesday, January 20th, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. He ran a campaign of hope and change, and the American people were expecting a presidency of hope and change.
Here’s Obama on single payer before he became president:
At the end, he says:
We may not get there immediately, because first we have to take back the White House, and we gotta take back the Senate, and we gotta take back the House.
Wish granted.
Here’s the Congress that Obama had to institute a single-payer healthcare plan:
But did we get a single-payer, Medicare-for-all, universal healthcare system? Unsurprisingly to those who’ve paid attention to his campaign donations and his deep connections to corporate America, no.
It seemed like as far as we could get as a nation was the Affordable Care Act, and that single-payer healthcare was a long ways away in the distance, and that what matters the most right now is the ACA.
On May 26th, 2015, Bernie Sanders, an unknown Democratic-Socialist, Independent senator from Vermont announced his campaign for president, and one of the key issues that came with that campaign was a single-payer healthcare system.
Finally, a campaign of real hope and change that is not funded by corporate America that can bring us single-payer healthcare once and for all. People were exited. However, someone decided to crash the party.
Hillary Clinton said this in one of her campaign rallies:
Never, ever come to pass? Wow, sounds like someone is trying really hard to make the optimism for real hope and change go away.
About a week later, Chelsea Clinton said this about Bernie’s healthcare proposals: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfQQdfTycM8)
Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP Program, dismantle Medicare, [and] dismantle private insurance.
No, Chelsea, Bernie is not trying to dismantle Medicare, it’s called a Medicare-for-all healthcare system. Although, dismantling corporations of which the only purpose is to profit off of people’s need to seek medical attention seems like a pretty good idea to me at least.
Through the process of controlling the narratives in the corporate media, and executing several instances of election fraud, the Democratic Party establishment was successful in making sure Bernie Sanders did not win the “Democratic” Primary. But, he did not lose his message, and the American people did not stop fighting, and believing.
On January 13th, Pew Research released this polling data about public opinion on single-payer healthcare, and how much more popular it has become.
Even Republicans (especially low-income Republicans) have all been viewing single-payer more favorably than before.
But it’s not just public opinion that has been affected, there have been significant cases of single-payer legislation making notable progress.
The Sacramento Bee reports: (http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article153931299.html)
The California Senate approved a measure Thursday aimed at establishing a government-run universal health care system in the Golden State. The system, which would replace Obamacare — or what follows it under the Trump administration — would dramatically overhaul the health care market in California. Approved on a 23–14 vote, it now moves to the Assembly.
…
Under the plan, government would negotiate prices with doctors, hospitals and other providers, acting as the “single payer” for everyone’s health care in the place of insurance companies. All Californians would receive coverage regardless of immigration status or ability to pay.
And recently, HR 676, less than six months later, has received the majority of House Democrats as cosponsors.
This bill above, and simply the concept of single-payer healthcare is being increasingly used as a litmus test by voters, more so than before. As Mike Figueredo from The Humanist Report puts it, “We’ve monopolized the healthcare debate”.
Thanks to an independent senator from Vermont, we have come closer than ever before to getting a single-payer healthcare system, and that trend-line of possibility is still going up and up. Before we know it, we’ll have the White House, the Senate, and the House, but not with just Democrats, instead, with progressives.
