Este es un momento crítico para nuestro movimiento. ¡Nos enfrentamos a una enorme amenaza y a una enorme oportunidad!

La amenaza es clara. Trump y los republicanos están decididos a diezmar el gasto en atención médica pública para que sus compañeros multimillonarios y la industria de la atención médica puedan obtener ganancias. Mientras tanto, no harán nada para abordar los problemas de nuestro amañado sistema de atención médica. Lo empeorarán.

Esta es una crisis y debemos responder. Las enfermeras se oponen a todos y cada uno de los intentos de privar a las personas de la atención sanitaria. Lucharemos para defender a nuestros pacientes, como siempre lo hemos hecho.

Este momento también es crítico porque nos presenta una oportunidad para hacer de la atención médica un tema político decisivo de los próximos cuatro años. Tenemos un plan sobre cómo luchar contra los ataques a la atención médica y también luchamos por Medicare para Todos.

Sabemos que las probabilidades están en nuestra contra. Pero sabemos que podemos ganar si suficientes personas como usted, dan un paso al frente y se comprometen a actuar juntos. ¿Estás con nosotros?

La Amenaza

Comencemos hablando de la amenaza que representa la nueva administración para la atención médica y cómo podemos responder.

La administración Trump intentará recortar Medicaid y la Ley de Atención Médica Asequible para poder pagar sus recortes de impuestos para los ricos. Intentarán ampliar Medicare Advantage, la opción privatizada de Medicare que es peor para las personas mayores y administrada por compañías de seguros privadas, para permitir que estas compañías obtengan ganancias cada vez mayores a expensas de nuestros ancianos y de nuestros impuestos al Medicare.

Trump y los republicanos se pondrán del lado de las corporaciones y los multimillonarios y venderán a la clase trabajadora. Es un gobierno de los ricos, para los ricos. Estos programas de atención médica existentes no son perfectos. Pero simplemente eliminarlos, recortar su financiación o entregar más poder a la industria de la atención de salud sólo empeorará la crisis. ¡Debemos contraatacar!

Cómo Luchamos

Podemos vencer a Trump. No es tan fuerte como cree y lo hemos vencido antes.

Trump no ganó las elecciones de forma aplastante. No hay un mandato enorme para su agenda. Su margen de victoria del 1.6% es minúsculo en términos históricos . Él tiene mayorías muy estrechas en la Cámara y el Senado. Trump es la persona de mayor edad en asumir el cargo de presidente y es un candidato saliente, ya en su segundo mandato.

Durante la primera presidencia de Trump, fue derrotado una y otra vez. Durante las primeras semanas de su segunda presidencia ya sufrió pérdidas: Tuvo que renunciar a sus planes de congelar subvenciones y préstamos federales y sus intentos de una guerra comercial fueron frustrados sin grandes victorias para su agenda. También se pueden detener sus ataques a al sistema de salud público.

Los ataques de la industria de la salud y de la administración Trump serán variados y sostenidos. Es por eso que le pedimos que traiga la presentación de MPT 101 a su organización, apuntándose aquí. Les esnseñaremos las tácticas que tuvieron éxito durante el primer mandato de Trump. Pero sólo funcionan si muchas personas se involucran y actúan juntas, por eso necesitamos que todo su equipo se una.

Cómo Construimos Algo Mejor

Si bien debemos luchar contra los ataques a la atención sanitaria, no podemos limitarnos a luchar para defender el status quo. El status quo es un sistema amañado que sólo funciona para los grandes accionistas y directores ejecutivos de la industria del cuidado de la salud.

Merecemos algo mejor y exigimos algo mejor.

Debemos seguir luchando por una solución adecuada a la crisis de salud. Debemos seguir luchando por un sistema de clase mundial que garantice atención para todos. Debemos seguir luchando por Medicare para Todos.

Sabemos que esta pelea parece difícil en este momento. Nos enfrentamos a una poderosa industria de la atención sanitaria, a un Partido Republicano envalentonado y a un Partido Demócrata que está en desorden y que sistemáticamente no ha abordado la crisis de la atención médica. Estas son condiciones que nos ayudarán a hacer del tema de atención médica una cuestión política definitoria.

La Oportunidad

Si bien las elecciones han creado una enorme cantidad de peligros y riesgos, también han creado una oportunidad.

Todo está en juego. Todo está en juego.

Ya sabemos que Trump y su agenda no son muy populares. Sus ataques a la atención de salud lo harán aún más impopular, y estos ataques centrarán aún más la mira en la atención de salud: ya es uno de los temas que más preocupa a la gente, pero podemos esperar que esto aumente.

La industria del cuidado de la salud también es tremendamente impopular. La gente está harta de que la estafen. No tenemos que convencer a la gente de que la industria es el principal obstáculo para un sistema que funcione adecuadamente, pero sí tenemos que ayudar a organizar esa ira y hacerle saber a la gente sobre la alternativa.

Encuesta tras encuesta — incluida una realizada el año pasado por National Nurses United (¡estén atentos para obtener más detalles al respecto pronto!) — muestran consistentemente que Medicare para Todos es una política popular en todos los grupos demográficos, y en todo el espectro político. Incluso una mayoría de votantes republicanos apoya Medicare para Todos, así como un porcentaje abrumador de demócratas.

Todas estas son razones por las que los demócratas deberían defender Medicare para Todos. Luchar por la justicia en la atención médica resaltaría que Trump está del lado de los multimillonarios y las grandes empresas. Adoptar una postura contra la enormemente impopular industria de la atención médica demostraría que lucharán por la clase trabajadora.

No nos hacemos falsas ilusiones sobre los demócratas. Sus líderes están en deuda con la industria de la atención médica. Han tenido muchas oportunidades y no han garantizado atención sanitaria para todos. Deben darse cuenta de que este fracaso es una razón clave para comprender por qué perdieron en 2024, y que adoptar Medicare para Todos será clave para volver a ganar.

No podemos confiar en que lleguen por sí solos a las conclusiones correctas. Necesitamos mostrarles a los demócratas que su incapacidad para arreglar el sistema de atención médica ayuda a explicar por qué perdieron y mostrarles que defendiendo Medicare para Todos es la forma en que pueden ganar.

Nuestro Plan

Queremos compartir nuestro plan contigo, porque serás fundamental para el mismo. Esperamos que estés de acuerdo con nosotros en que es fundamental luchar contra los ataques de Trump y construir un movimiento para Medicare a pesar de él. Esperamos que te comprometas a ser organizador(a) y voluntario(a) en este momento crucial.

Es crucial que estemos preparados y organizados para defender la atención médica y que usemos estos ataques para reclutar personas para nuestro movimiento (nuevamente, puedes unirte a nuestro movimiento apùntando a tu organización aquí). También debemos organizarnos en nuestras comunidades. Obtenemos nuestra fuerza de nuestra comunidad y del sentimiento de solidaridad de las personas que están hombro con hombro con nosotros en la lucha por la justicia en la atención médica. Trump intenta dividirnos, debemos unirnos.

En los próximos meses queremos trabajar contigo para organizar Fiestas Comunitarias en todo el país para hacer esto. Estas fiestas Comunitarias serán una oportunidad para reunirse con personas de su comunidad local para hablar sobre las amenazas a la atención médica y planificar para ganar Medicare para Todos.

Si puedes comprometerte a organizar una Fiesta Comunitaria, inscríbete aquí. Le daremos todo el apoyo que necesita.

Creemos que reunirse en persona es el antídoto perfecto contra las semillas de la división y el miedo que Trump está tratando de sembrar. Esta es nuestra oportunidad para invitar a personas que se sienten asustadas, alienadas o enojadas por lo que está haciendo la administración actual. Personas que quieren hacer algo, pero necesitan orientación sobre cómo involucrarse y mantenerse activos. Fueron millones de personas las que se movilizaron durante la primera presidencia de Trump y hay millones de personas que sufren a causa del sistema de atención sanitaria manipulado: tenemos que ayudar a estas personas a luchar por una alternativa que nos funcione a todos.

Una vez que estemos organizados, debemos llevar nuestra lucha a nuestros oponentes. Sí, eso significa enfrentarse a Trump, pero también significa desafiar directamente a los demócratas. Le diremos a los demócratas que ha llegado el momento de luchar por la justicia en la atención médica. Cuando la legislación de Medicare para Todos se reintroduzca en la Cámara y el Senado, aprovecharemos ese momento para desafiar directamente a los demócratas.

Pero el crucial primer paso son las Fiestas Comunitarias en todo el país. Por favor, anímate a organizar una en tu comunidad.

Podemos Ganar

Existe un peligro real de que pasemos los próximos cuatro años simplemente respondiendo a Trump, constantemente a la defensiva. O peor aún, que abrumados por sus acciones y ataques, el miedo y la angustia que muchos de nosotros sentimos nos llevarán al desaliento y la inacción. Las tácticas de conmoción y pavor de Trump están haciendo que la gente se sienta asustada y desconcertada. Su intención es abrumarnos y dividirnos.

Éstas son tácticas clásicas para acabar con los sindicatos y no nos asustan. Como sindicato nos enfrentamos a jefes como él todo el tiempo. Y les ganamos.

Si dudas de que podamos hacer esto, echa un vistazo a lo que hemos hecho juntos antes. En los últimos 10 años, Medicare para Todos se ha vuelto muy popular, alcanzando niveles de apoyo cercanos a récords históricos de soporte cerca de niveles récord. También ha llegado cerca niveles históricos de apoyo en el Congresos, con más de la mitad de los demócratas de la Cámara copatrocinarán la legislación en 2022. Hemos visto las primeras audiencias sobre Medicare para Todos en la Cámara y el Senado. Contribuimos a que Medicare para Todos fuera uno de los temas principales en las primarias demócratas de 2020.

Realmente duele que aún no hayamos ganado cuando cada día de retraso tiene consecuencias mortales para tantas personas, pero no podemos perder de vista los avances que hemos logrado. Este progreso se debe al arduo trabajo de personas como usted. Su trabajo organizando campañas electorales, bancos telefónicos y tormentas, hablando con sus amigos, familiares y vecinos, apoyando a los candidatos políticos que defienden la causa y desafiando a los que no lo hacen… Esto ha impulsado el progreso que hemos logrado y será clave para ganar en el futuro. Estamos ansiosos por trabajar junto a tí.

Welcome to 2025, when we have been overwhelmed putting out literal and figurative fires across the country. But even now — especially now — nurses remain dedicated to our fight to win Medicare for All. And we hope you are with us.

This is a critical moment for our movement. We are faced with a huge threat, and a massive opportunity.

The threat is clear. Trump and the Republicans are determined to decimate public health care spending so that their fellow billionaires and the corporate health care industry can profit. Meanwhile, they will do nothing to actually address the problems of our rigged health care system. They will make it worse.

This is a crisis and we must respond. Nurses oppose any and all attempts to take health care away from people. We will fight to defend our patients, as we always have.

This moment is also critical because it presents us with an opportunity. An opportunity to make health care a defining political issue of the next four years.

If you are reading this, you probably already know that we need Medicare for All. You are probably wondering how we can make progress during these challenging times.

We have a plan for how to fight against attacks on health care as we also fight for Medicare for All.

It is not guaranteed to succeed. In fact, the odds are stacked against us. But we know that we can win if enough people — people like you — step up and commit to taking action together. Are you with us?

The threat

Let’s start by talking about the threat that the new administration poses to health care, and how we can respond.

The Trump administration will try to cut Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in order to pay for their tax cuts for the wealthy. They will try to expand Medicare Advantage, the privatized Medicare option that is worse for seniors and run by private insurance companies, to enable these companies to make ever-greater profits at the expense of our seniors and our Medicare tax dollars.

Trump and the Republicans will stand on the side of corporations and billionaires and sell out the working class. It is government by the rich, for the rich.

These existing health care programs aren’t perfect. But simply taking them away, cutting their funding, or handing more power to the health care industry will only make the crisis worse. We must fight back.

How we fight back

Nurses stand against any and all attempts to take health care away from our patients. We believe that we can win this fight if enough people step up and take action.

We can beat Trump. He’s not as strong as he thinks he is, and we’ve beaten him before.

Trump did not win the election by a landslide. There is no huge mandate for his agenda. His 1.6% margin of victory is tiny by historical comparison. He has razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate. Trump is the oldest person to be inaugurated president and is a lame duck, already in his second term.

During Trump’s first presidency, he was defeated time and time again. During the first weeks of his second presidency he has already suffered losses: He had to give up on his plans to freeze federal grants and loans, and his attempts at a trade war were shut down without any major wins for his agenda. His attacks on health care can be stopped too.

The attacks by the health care industry and the Trump administration will be varied and sustained. We need to be dynamic and agile in how we respond.

That is why we are asking you to join our new Rapid Response Team. You can sign up here.

As a member of the Rapid Response Team, you will help to quickly coordinate efforts to push back against attacks. We will work with other organizations that believe in health care justice. We will use any tactic at our disposal: from organizing actions, to contacting elected officials, to flooding social and traditional media with our messages. These tactics were successful during Trump’s first term. But they only work if lots of people get involved and take action together.

How we build something better

While we must fight back against attacks on health care, we cannot just fight to defend the status quo. The status quo is a rigged system that only works for the big shareholders and CEOs of the health care industry.

We deserve better and we demand better.

We must keep fighting for a proper solution to the health care crisis. We must keep fighting for a world-class system that guarantees care for all. We must keep fighting for Medicare for All.

We know that this fight looks hard right now. We are up against a powerful health care industry, an emboldened Republican party, and a Democratic Party that is in disarray and that has consistently failed to address the health care crisis.

We know that there is not a clear path to winning Medicare for All in the next four years, but we truly believe that the conditions are there for us to make health care a defining political issue: if we are focused, organized, and if enough people step up and get to work.

The opportunity

While the election has created a huge amount of danger and risk, it has also created an opportunity.

Everything is on the line. Everything is up for grabs.

We already know that Trump and his agenda are not widely popular. His attacks on health care will make him even more unpopular, and these attacks will further focus attention on health care: It is already one of the issues that people are most concerned about, but we can expect this to increase.

The health care industry is also wildly unpopular. People are sick of being ripped off. We don’t have to convince people that the industry is the main obstacle to a properly functioning system, but we do have to help organize that anger, and let people know about the alternative.

Poll after poll — including one conducted last year by National Nurses United (stay tuned for more details on that soon!) — consistently show that Medicare for All is a popular policy across all demographics, and across the political spectrum. Even a majority of Republican voters support Medicare for All, as well as an overwhelming percentage of Democrats.

All of these are reasons why the Democrats should be championing Medicare for All. Fighting for health care justice would highlight that Trump is on the side of the billionaires and big business. Taking a stand against the hugely unpopular health care industry would show that they will fight for the working class.

We hold no false illusions about the Democrats. Too many of their leaders are beholden to the health care industry. They have failed to fix the health care system. They have had plenty of opportunities and they have not guaranteed health care for all. They need to realize that this failure is a key reason to understanding why they lost in 2024, and that adopting Medicare for All will be key to them winning again.

We cannot trust them to reach the right conclusions by themselves. We need to show the Democrats that their failure to fix the health care system helps to explain why they lost and show them that championing Medicare for All is how they can win.

There are two ways that we can make elected Democrats listen. One is to engage directly with them; we have to be willing to speak to members of Congress and demand that they stand with the people and fight for Medicare for All. The other way is to keep ramping up the attention on the health care crisis so that they are forced to respond.

So here’s our opportunity: use Trump’s attacks on working class people to build our movement. Use the disarray in the Democratic Party to make them champion a winning cause in Medicare for All.

Our Plan

We want to share our plan with you, because you will be central to it. We hope that you agree with us that it is essential to fight back against Trump’s attacks and to build for Medicare for All. We hope that you will commit to being an organizer and volunteer in this crucial moment.

Firstly, we must get organized, both to fight back against attacks on health care and to fight for Medicare for All.

It’s crucial that we are prepared and organized to defend health care, and that we use these attacks to recruit people into our movement (again, you can join our Rapid Response Team here). We must also get organized in our communities. In these hard political times it is important to get together in person. We draw our strength from our community and from feeling the solidarity of the people who stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the fight for health care justice. Trump tries to divide us, we must unite.

In the coming months we want to work with you to organize House Parties all over the country to do this. These House Parties will be a chance to get together with people from your local community to talk about the threats to health care and to plan for winning Medicare for All.

If you can commit to hosting a House Party, sign up here. We will give you all of the support you need to make it happen.

This is our chance to invite people into our movement: people who are feeling scared, alienated or angry by what the current administration is doing. People who want to do something, but need guidance on how to get involved and get active. There were millions of people who were mobilized during the first Trump presidency. We need to help these people plug into our movement. There are millions of people suffering because of the rigged health care system: We need to help these people fight for an alternative.

We think that getting together in person is the perfect antidote to the seeds of division and fear that Trump is trying to sow.

Once we are organized, we must take our fight to our opponents. Yes, that means standing up against Trump, but it also means directly challenging the Democrats. We will tell the Democrats that the time is now to fight for health care justice. When Medicare for All legislation is reintroduced into the House and the Senate later this year, we will use that as a chance to challenge the Democrats directly.

After the House Parties, we will support groups of volunteers in congressional districts across the country to meet directly with their members of Congress and demand that they support Medicare for All.

But the crucial first step is House Parties across the country. Please step up to host one in your community.

We will use the attacks on health care to highlight how politicians are standing with the billionaires and the health care industry instead of working people. We will use the re-introduction of Medicare for All legislation to show people that there is a real alternative to the rigged system.

We are not saying this will be easy. We know that the odds are stacked against us. But we have an opportunity, and we know how to respond to an opportunity: We organize.

We can win.

There’s a real danger that we spend the next four years just responding to Trump, constantly on the back foot. Or worst still, that overwhelmed by his actions and attacks, the fear and distress many of us are feeling will lead to despondency and inaction. Trump’s shock-and-awe tactics are making people feel scared, and bewildered. His intention is to overwhelm us and divide us.

These are classic union busting tactics and they don’t scare us. As a union we face down bosses like him all the time. And we beat them.

This is not a time to bury our heads in the sand. Remember, this is what our opponents want. They want us to think we’ve lost before we even have the fight. Don’t give them that victory.

If you doubt that we can do this, take a look at what we have done together before. In the last 10 years Medicare for All has become hugely popular with levels of support near record highs. It has also reached near historic levels of support in Congress, with more than half of House Democrats cosponsoring the legislation in 2022. We have seen the first-ever hearings on Medicare for All in the House and Senate. We helped make Medicare for All one of the main issues at the 2020 Democratic primaries.

It really hurts that we have not won yet when every day of delay has life-and-death consequences for so many people, but we cannot lose sight of the progress we have made. This progress is down to the hard work of people like you. Like all great movements for justice, ours is powered by ordinary people stepping up, getting organized and taking action. Your work organizing canvasses, phone banks, and barnstorms, talking to your friends, family and neighbors, supporting political candidates that champion the cause and challenging those that don’t — this has driven the progress we have made, and it will be key to winning in the future. We can’t wait to work alongside you.

We are in a health care crisis. It may not be receiving the coverage it deserves in the media, and it certainly isn’t receiving the attention it requires in Washington D.C., but it is a crisis nonetheless.

Just ask the 26 million people who have no health insurance. Or the 16 million people who have been disenrolled from Medicaid in the last year, 6.4 million of whom are children. Or take a look at GoFundMe on any given day, and see the heartbreaking stories of the quarter million people who start fundraising campaigns every year to try and cover medical debt. Last year this even included a world-famous Olympic athlete.

This is a problem that affects us all. Our health care system is fundamentally broken. The only people it works for are the health care corporations who make obscene profits off the backs of sick people and understaffed workers. If you don’t believe us, take a look at the most expensive property listed in Tennessee, just one of the many houses belonging to the billionaire owner of HCA, the largest for-profit hospital corporation in the world.

While most politicians ignore the reality of this crisis, nurses confront it everyday in their workplace. That is why, while working tirelessly to help and heal people, nurses are also working to help heal the broken system. And we know the solution: Medicare for All.

Union nurses are in lockstep with public opinion, while politicians are out of touch. Polling shows that people want Medicare for All. It is supported by 69% of the public. That soars to 88% when just looking Democratic Party voters. It even has 46% support among Republicans. This popular support is just not reflected in Washington D.C. There are currently 113 cosponsors for Medicare for All legislation in the House and 15 cosponsors in the Senate. Given the current political climate, having this level of support is something to be proud of and is clearly a result of our movement’s organizing. But if we want to win the transformational changes our country so desperately needs, we need to address the root issue: that our politicians are not prioritizing reform, in large part because of corporate influence on our democracy.

In this important election year, the Democratic Party has no serious legislative proposal on health care, much less the full throated support for Medicare for All that the majority of their voters need and want. And of course, the Republican Party is no better — health care justice is scarcely mentioned in Donald Trump’s horrifying procession towards the Republican nomination.

Why is this? Why are our elected leaders so out of line with the people who they are supposed to represent?

Fundamentally it comes down to money, as it so often does: many politicians are more beholden to the corporate health care corporations who bankroll their campaigns than to their own voters. That is why we got the Affordable Care Act, rather than single-payer health care, and it is why they have failed to act on the upswell of support for Medicare for All in recent years.

Health care industry money is distorting our democracy

Health care corporations in the US make huge profits. They use hundreds of millions of dollars of those profits to lobby politicians against reform, creating a feedback loop that has terrible effects on the rest of us. Take just one part of the health care industry: Big Pharma. Drug companies alone have nearly 1,800 lobbyists in DC — that is more than three lobbyists for every member of Congress. They have spent $8.5 billion on lobbying over the past 25 years, and given $700 million in campaign contributions in that same time. They donate to both parties, and their lobbyists include former leaders of both parties.

Why do these companies spend so much on lobbying? Because it’s a good investment. Buying politicians who then stand in the way of reform allows these companies to continue making massive amounts of money. ​​Ten of the top pharma companies in the country made over $110 billion in profits in 2022. And the result? People in the US pay more for pain-relieving and life-saving drugs than any other country in the world.

Health care companies use their vast profits to distort our democracy. They help elect candidates who put profits over patients. They lobby aggressively against health care reforms. And when legislation is passed to challenge them, they sue the government.

In order to win Medicare for All, we need to drive a wedge between corporate health care and the people elected to represent us. We have to challenge and break the hold of corporate money over our politics.

Politicians think they can get away with it

The second challenge we face is that too often, our elected leaders don’t feel accountable to their voters.

Politicians know that health care is a critically important issue for people. They know that Medicare for All has broad support across the country, and deep support among their voters. But they think that it is not a key issue for people, the type of issue which determines how someone will actually cast their vote.

In order to make health care, and Medicare for All, an issue that cannot be ignored in this election, we need to show our elected leaders that there are huge numbers of people who see health care justice as their main, or one of their main, issues which determines whether they vote and who they vote for. We need to show them that supporting Medicare for All is not only the right thing to do, but the strategically correct thing to do: that it will win them votes.

Our strategy in 2024

Our organizing strategy for 2024 aims to answer these two challenges.

We want to shine a spotlight on the links between the corporate health care industry and politicians, and show how corporate money is blocking the change we need. By shining this light we hope to start to break up this cozy relationship.

While we weaken the power of the industry over politicians, we also need to strengthen the power of everyday people. We need to continue to build public support for Medicare for All, and we need to demonstrate the popular support that is already there.

In short, we need our elected leaders to hear our message: listen to your constituents, not the corporate health care industry.

To do this, we will lean into the strengths of our movement: the leadership of nurses as some of the most trusted people in our society, the willingness of everyday people to step up all over the country and take collective action, and the network of grassroots organizations who campaign tirelessly for health care justice.

Patients Over Profits

One way we will do this is by challenging the power of the health care industry through our Patients Over Profits pledge.

Thanks to our movement’s collective organizing, over 150 elected officials and candidates have already signed our pledge to not accept donations from the for-profit health care industry. By doing so, they are reducing the influence of the industry on our political system, and they are drawing attention to the outsized influence that still exists.

This effort has been people-powered, driven by volunteers all over the country who have researched, contacted, and challenged elected officials to step up.

But if this campaign is going to have the impact we want, it needs to get bigger, and we believe that 2024 is the year when that can happen. During the lead up to an election, politicians are more accessible and responsive to the public, attending events and trying to win support. With every new pledge signer, the power and reputation of the pledge increases. We need to take advantage of this moment to get the pledge in front of as many politicians as possible.

We have learned that candidates are particularly responsive to their own constituents, and even more so when engaged publicly at events. Therefore, over the coming months, we will work with local health care justice groups, and volunteers everywhere, to identify and contact politicians in their area — online, in person, and over the phone. We will support this work by sharing the tools, training and tips that we have seen to be successful elsewhere in this campaign.

If you are part of a local health care justice group and want to find out about adopting the Patients Over Profits campaign locally, let us know.

If you want to volunteer and help power the campaign by contacting your local candidates, attending events, or joining our Research Team, let us know.

With your help, we believe we can use this moment to send a powerful message to the health care industry: our elected leaders are not for sale.

Health Care Justice Voters

Additionally, we need to show our elected leaders that there is massive demand for health care justice now. We will do this by asking people in our communities their opinion about the current system and what is needed to fix it, and by asking them to demonstrate and make visible their support for action.

Nurses have been campaigning for health care reform for decades, but in recent years our campaign has emphasized canvassing as a core tactic to build our movement. We understand the power of direct person-to-person communication, of going out into our communities and speaking directly with our neighbors, our co-workers, and our family and friends about Medicare for All. We understand the power of exchanging our personal stories.

The Covid-19 pandemic meant we had to take a break from canvassing to keep each other safe, but in 2024 we will return to canvassing in a big way. Just as we want to cut out the middle-men in our health care system, we need to cut out the middle-men in our politics — the corporate media and industry spokespeople that peddle disinformation — and speak directly with people in our communities.

We will speak with our neighbors about the current broken health care system, we will let them know about our plan to fix it, and we will ask them to become ‘Health Care Justice Voters’ — in other words, pledge to consider health care justice as a top priority in their voting choices this election cycle.

If you want to organize a canvass, get in touch with us here.

We will provide all of the support, training and resources that you need to organize a canvass, but we need people who are willing to put their hand up and take responsibility for making local canvasses happen across the country.

Laying the groundwork for Medicare for All

We are under no illusions about the challenges of the current political moment. This year there is a lot on the line, and there is not an immediate path to enacting the action on health care that we all so desperately need. But there is crucial work we can do now to lay the groundwork that will bring about a different political context. We must use this moment to build the power of our movement. We need to continue to build public support for Medicare for All, and we must show our elected leaders that supporting Medicare for All is a popular stance that their voters want to see.

In the words of Medicare for All champion, Senator Bernie Sanders:

‘The struggle for Medicare for All will not be easy. We’re taking on the greed and power of the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry who make tens of billions a year profiting from this broken system. We’re taking on the massive amount of campaign contributions that go to politicians who defend their interests, as well as thousands of well-paid lobbyists who flood congressional offices.

Guaranteeing health care to all Americans as a human right would be a transformative moment for our country.

It would not only keep people healthier, happier and increase life expectancy, it would be a major step forward in creating a more vibrant democracy.’

Nurses have been leading the fight for health care justice for decades, and we will not give up until we win. We hope you will join us.

Nurses dedicate their careers to caring for others. They work tirelessly to ensure that the people who come into their facilities get the support they need. The California Nurses Association is dedicated to extending that care to everyone, and that’s why we continue to work tirelessly to build a just health care system that is there for everyone when they need it. We are doubling down on our long-held commitment to fight for and win CalCare.

We know that winning something as transformative as a just health care system will not come easy. It will take a serious and committed movement of people demanding it and working to win it. We appreciate all the people who are in this movement with us. We made no secret of the fact that we were angry with how our last effort to pass legislation in California ended, but that anger sharpens our resolve to push forward, and it does not obscure all of the progress we have made. We have analyzed the last campaign and have come up with a plan to take us all forward together to build unstoppable momentum that will eventually ensure we win.

We have secured the introduction of a spot bill, now known as AB 1690. A spot bill is essentially a bill with an intention of what we aspire to accomplish. In our case, it would mean that it is the intent of the legislature to work toward single-payer health care for all Californians, and we would introduce a bill with substantive language in 2024. We’ve heard from many legislators that they want to engage in meaningful discussion and give feedback on single payer. While there are certain principles of CalCare we would never compromise on, we also understand that it is important to engage in dialogue with the legislature and ensure that a majority support CalCare when the time comes. A spot bill allows the time for this critical dialogue while we continue to organize and build power and support for CalCare inside and outside the Capitol.

The introduction of AB 1690 is an important step. It gives us a focus point to organize around now, and it provides us with our north star to build for: a full CalCare bill introduced in 2024. It is essential that we put in work now to prepare for that. We have developed a five point plan to do that. We share our plan here in the interest of transparency and honesty, and because we know that the strength of our movement is derived from the grassroots — the committed people who step up to do the hard work of organizing and campaigning for CalCare. We want to show you what the nurses are committed to doing to fight for CalCare and to ask you to work with us.

Here is our five point plan to build the movement for CalCare this year.

1. Our biggest ever field program

Grassroots organizing is key to winning CalCare. It is how we bring more people into our movement, and it is how we show politicians that the public is with us. We plan to develop our biggest ever field program, and we need you to work with us to do it. Door-to-door canvassing is going to be crucial to these efforts. We need to get out into our communities and talk to our neighbors about CalCare. That’s why we’re organizing a Statewide Weekend of Action on Saturday, March 25th, and Sunday, March 26th. We already have over 70 people signed up to host canvasses. If you want to step up and take part let us know here. We will give you all the support you need to take part. This is the single most useful thing you can do now to build support for CalCare.

We will also build our CalCare District Leader Program so that we can have local organizing in as many Assembly districts as possible. We will offer continued training and support to tailor an organizing approach that works best for each district and work to build coalitions of local organizations and community leaders in your district to support CalCare. This is something that we saw work really well to move legislators in the last session, and we’re excited to expand it. If you want to become a District Leader, let us know here.

“Fierce, dogged organizing by nurses and our community allies is the reason why CalCare advanced through the Assembly Health and Appropriations committees last session and why CalCare is on the table again.”
-Puneet Maharaj, California Nurses Association’s Government Relations Director

2. Broadening and deepening our coalition

We deeply appreciate our allies in the health care justice movement. We will continue to work shoulder to shoulder. But we also need to expand and diversify the movement by including other new organizations and people who have not been involved before. We will look to proactively build the coalition for CalCare by inviting other organizations to support and by working with District Leaders to sign up supportive local organizations. We are particularly excited to work with organizations that want to step up and help organize to pass CalCare, organizations that can help to put boots on the ground to canvass, and who can help to engage with and put pressure on politicians. These organizations will be invited to an Organizing Table to help coordinate action and to build support and momentum to pass CalCare.

If you are part of an organization that supports CalCare, have a point person fill out the CalCare Organizational Endorsement Form for org-related updates.

3. Building support in the labor movement

Support from the labor movement is essential to getting CalCare passed. The California Labor Federation did officially support the previous CalCare bill AB 1400, and we want to build on this. But we need to get active support from individual unions and commitments to work toward passing legislation. Over the next months we will be reaching out to all the Central Labor Councils across the state, arranging to attend meetings and make presentations. We know that CalCare will greatly improve conditions for workers. We need to make sure that union members know this too. If you’re a union leader or member, and you would like for us to give this presentation to your union, please send us an email at info@medicare4all.org.

4. Public education

We want to create a robust education program to build and solidify support for CalCare and to inoculate against attacks and disinformation from our opponents.

During AB 1400’s progress through the Assembly last session, and during last year’s elections, we saw what the health care industry is capable of. They launched a sustained propaganda effort against CalCare. Millions of dollars were spent by corporate interests to attack pro-CalCare candidates. We know that the closer we get to winning CalCare, the more these attacks will increase. We must start preparing for this now. We plan to roll out educational programming and materials to inoculate the public from these attacks. This approach will include a Nurses & Allies Speakers’ Bureau — a cadre of CalCare Speakers who can speak about CalCare with local groups — and a series of video explainers that will counter corporate disinformation online. Stay tuned for more information about trainings to become part of the speakers’ bureau.

“The billion-dollar insurance industry will come forward with their lies, complaints, and army of lobbyists, but nurses see every day why Californians desperately need CalCare. We have the facts and the people behind us.”
-Puneet Maharaj, California Nurses Association’s Government Relations Director

5. Organizing inside the legislature

We need legislators to pass legislation. We want to work closely with the legislators who already support CalCare — including the CalCare champions our movement helped elect — to work out how to get CalCare passed into law.

Some legislators are allies with whom we can work. Some are supportive of CalCare in principle but need reassurances about our bill. Others will need to be pressured to get on board or worked around. We know that some politicians are not with the people and will never support us. But we don’t want to paint all politicians with the same brush. We need an intelligent and strategic approach to working in Sacramento. This work will be led and guided by our excellent Government Relations Department — they will work to educate legislators and their staff on the policy details of CalCare, answer any questions they may have, and to take feedback on the bill. They will help us to shape our organizing strategy — letting us know how to approach each Assemblymember and whether they need to be pressured or persuaded.

“With an even larger Democratic supermajority this session, there are no excuses for Sacramento to deny Californians guaranteed health care through CalCare. Nurses look forward to working with Assemblymember Kalra to build support for a single-payer health care system that puts patients above profits.”
-California Nurses Association President Sandy Reding, RN

This plan relies on the strength of our grassroots movement and particularly the willingness of people to step up and to organize in their own communities. All the efforts that our union will make — to galvanize the rest of the labor movement, to educate the public, to build our coalition, to organize politicians — are amplified by and connected to the local organizing of CalCare supporters. We will invite unions and other organizations to join our canvassing field effort. The public will hear about CalCare on the doorstep. And legislators will feel more motivated to work on CalCare when they know that their constituents are canvassing and being canvassed. If you want to be involved in these efforts, sign up here.

We are very proud of the fact that this movement is led by nurses. Nurses are on the front line of the broken health care system and know better than anyone what is wrong with the status quo and what needs to be done to fix it. But we also know that we don’t do anything alone. This campaign draws its strength from being a grassroots movement of committed people. We thank you and we look forward to working together again.

Back in December of 2019 I was honored to be appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to the newly created Healthy California for All Commission. The purpose of the Commission was to develop a plan for universal health care in California “through a unified financing system, including, but not limited to a single payer financing system,” and to deliver a report with its findings by 2021.

Ultimately, I felt that the Commission did not fulfill our stated goal when our final report was delivered this April. I want to fill you in on my sense of what happened, and why I ultimately voted no.

As the lead regulatory policy specialist for the California Nurses Association / National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) — proudly working on health care policy and legislation for the largest union of registered nurses in the country — I was eager to put my expertise to use and bring us closer to guaranteed health care as a human right for every California resident.

Through my work at CNA/NNU, I have seen how harmful and deceitful the profit-driven health care industry can be, both at the facility level where our nurses sometimes have to go on strike for patient safety and in politics. I’ve seen hugely profitable hospital corporations force nurses to work in unsafe conditions without optimal protections or safe staffing — the same corporations that are currently pursuing dangerous “home all alone” practices that replace 24/7 hands-on nursing care with remote technology. And I’ve seen giant corporations like CVS Health (owner of the health insurer Aetna) contribute millions of dollars to block Medicare for All.

Contrary to the worsening trends of corporate health care, I saw my role on the Commission as an important opportunity to help lead the largest state in the country (and fifth largest economy in the world) to a more humane health care system, where everyone can get the health care they need without regard to their ability to pay. And without a doubt, based on countless studies and the real-world examples of many other countries, I knew that the most effective and efficient way to do this is through a single payer health care system, like CalCare and Medicare for All.

Unfortunately, getting wins from this Commission was a somewhat uphill battle. Including myself, there were only a few members of the 18-member commission who were consistently vocal and unequivocal in our support for a true single payer system. There were also a few more allies who generally supported single payer, but respectfully, too many of the other commissioners were tied to the status quo and supported a plan for managed care type organizations and other risk-bearing entities (aka insurers).

However, despite the gaps in the Commission’s final report, we made some serious strides collectively as a movement. Over the course of the Commission process, spanning over 2 years and 15 meetings, we genuinely addressed all the repeated bad faith policy questions and concerns that politicos raise about single payer.

I can say that we built the most policy-educated single payer movement that we’ve had so far in California. Health care justice activists packed the meetings every month, made insightful policy comments, and showed our elected leaders that we were serious about the merits of single payer.

The timing of the Commission was actually fortuitous as we were pushing the CalCare bill (AB 1400) through the Assembly committees earlier this year. With the lack of in-person hearing opportunities due to the pandemic and the presence of two key legislators as non-voting members of the Commission, the Commission meetings became a platform to advocate for AB 1400 and demonstrate the strength of our movement. And I believe that all of our engagement with the Commission helped move Assembly Health Committee Chair Jim Wood to support AB 1400.

In terms of our effect on the Commission process itself, I can point to the following wins:

• We secured additional meetings, including a September 2021 meeting on racial equity that was not originally scheduled to happen.
• We heard from prominent policy and political experts who reaffirmed the advantages of single payer. Commissioner Bill Hsaio talked about some of the strengths of the single payer system he helped shape in Taiwan. Former Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin said California can absolutely lead the way in doing single payer.
• UC Berkeley Labor Center’s Ken Jacobs gave another authoritative voice on what we already know from multiple studies: that single payer would be more fiscally sustainable than our current system, and that there are a myriad of ways to progressively finance such a system.
• The community engagement process conducted by the various health foundations on behalf of the Commission showed that an overwhelming majority of low-income Californians both strongly support “a single, statewide, government-run health care program that covers all people who live in California” — in other words a single payer system — and strongly support replacing premiums, copays, and deductibles with progressive taxation to get there. And support among Californians of color for single payer is higher than support in the aggregate.
• The Commission’s own consultants did a cost analysis showing that under a single payer system, we can offer full coverage that includes community and institutional long term services and supports, with no cost sharing, while still saving money over our current system in the longer term. In fact, it would only take three years for such a system to start reaping savings.
• The legal memo on federal health program waivers and appendix on Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) show that there is a potential path to single payer open without Congress passing new legislation. We have an opportunity to move forward on single payer now, and California should step up to the challenge.

Despite these victories, the steps outlined in the final report to get to single payer are muddy. The Commission could have done a significantly better job to highlight and detail a clear path to achieving single payer. Instead, the report presents no clear recommendations on single payer. I strongly believe that the Commission has not met the obligations it was given by the Governor and legislature.

More specifically:

1. The Commission has not adequately analyzed a plan for achieving single payer, as required by our enabling statute. At best, the Commission has buried the lede on the benefits of single payer.
2. There are clear short-comings and potential problems with the so-called intermediary health plan option that were not adequately discussed in the report.
3. The Commission’s report confuses reforms of our system as prerequisites to single payer. Let’s not create more steps than necessary on the road to single payer. Some reforms can be done at the same time as we move to single payer, and others may be more effective after we have a single payer system in place. And other reforms may be obsolete and unnecessary after implementing a single payer system.
4. There is a clear need for the legislature to pursue a bill to enact single payer, and the Commission should have made clear recommendations to the legislature. The first formal step in moving California to implement single payer is to pass a policy bill. Everything else follows. Federal waivers follow. Finalizing a financing plan follows. We must pass policy legislation first. Informal discussions with the federal government are insufficient to enact single payer in California.

For all these reasons, I could not agree that we met our charge as a Commission, and therefore I voted No on transmitting the final report. The final report falls short of its stated goal to move us down the path toward a single payer system.

Amidst a global pandemic and the increasing right wing attacks on reproductive rights, gender-affirming rights, and LBGTQ+ rights across the country, it’s more important than ever for California to put forward strong legislation to guarantee health care as a human right. Now is the time.

I am still hopeful, and I know that we can continue to build a health care justice movement that is powerful enough to win. I want to thank all of the CalCare supporters for having my back throughout this process.

It’s been frustrating at times to feel like I was one of the few voices of reason, demanding California act with courage and fortitude to end our inhumane profit-driven system of insurance, on this Commission. But having supporters like you in my corner made this process much more tolerable. Even with the best policy arguments, we will only win by building our power together as a movement. And I will continue to be by your side, fighting every day, until we win single payer in California.

I look forward to a new CalCare bill being introduced in 2023. Onward to victory!

Click here to view Commissioner Comsti’s 2 page comments on the final report. Click here to watch CNA’s last CalCare prep meeting for the final commission meeting.

Transcript: Carmen Comsti’s Remarks at Final Commission Meeting

Commissioner Comsti was the sole NO vote on transmitting the final report to the governor and legislature. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.

I want to first thank you Secretary Ghaly and my fellow commissioners. We knew when we started our work as a commission that if we did not fundamentally change our fragmented health care system — it’s a system that allows profit-driven insurers and profit-taking healthcare corporations to thrive at the expense of Californians — that we would pay the price with our health and with our lives. And our work as a commission needed to be done with clarity, conviction, and with the utmost urgency.

I have proudly represented frontline nurses throughout this commission and the pandemic — nurses who dedicate their lives and far too many of whom have paid with their lives to care for Californians and people across the country. And I have seen that I owe it to them to push and help our state to meet nurses’ consistent demand for decades that health care be recognized as right for all regardless of ability to pay, without being tied to a job or immigration status, and regardless of whether an insurance company deems us to be a liability to corporate pocket books.

And of course I know that not everyone on the commission has had the same perspective as me and I know that we have disagreements on the details, but I am a steadfast supporter single payer and I felt it it has been my duty to ensure that we fulfill that part of our legislative charge to develop and present a clear plan for achieving single payer in California.

In our final report, the analytic findings confirmed numerous previous studies on single payer systems that it would save patients and government money and that it can do so while providing comprehensive benefits to all. And the report’s appendices on federal waivers and ERISA confirm that there are legally reasonable paths that we can take and test on unified financing and single payer. And of course, like everybody else has said, the community engagement report confirmed that low-income Californians overwhelmingly support a single government-run health care system and they support replacing premiums, co-pays, deductibles with progressive taxation to get us there.

And while our report highlights many of these things that we already know about single payer, the steps to get there, as others have described, are muddy at best. I think the report falls short of presenting clear, concrete, formal (not informal) actions to get us to single payer. And I think the simplest way to describe it for me is that we bury the lead on single payer and its benefits. The report scarcely uses the phrase “single payer” at all and instead we do this implicit reference to it through the direct payments model. And without listening to the dozens of hours of very robust conversations among all of us, you might not know from the final report that single payer was even ever discussed fully in commission meetings.

I recognize that a lot of people made a lot of contributions from the draft of the report and that there are improvements, but at the end of the day the commission’s use of the term unified financing and other key terms — because we lack definitions — has always been opaque. And a major issue with our work is that we never came to a clear understanding of what certain things are, particularly the so-called intermediary option. And like I’ve said multiple times, I continue to underscore that a system that includes a role for health plan intermediaries is not and should not be considered unified financing because fragmentation in the financing would continue.

The report conflates single payer systems with health plan intermediary systems under the umbrella term of unified financing and fundamentally, without clear definitions of single payer / unified financing, we cannot have a clear path for achieving them.

A few more points that I want to highlight: the report confuses some reforms, some of which we didn’t discuss at all, of our current system, as prerequisites to unified financing. Some reforms can be done at the same time. Other reforms may be more effective after we have a single payer system in place, yet others described in the report would be obsolete if we had a single payer system.

I think as a commission we also haven’t given recommendations to the legislature despite discussions about needing legislation to obtain federal waivers.

And of course we did highlight the issue and importance of health equity, but we also didn’t have clear plans for rectifying the ongoing problems with the lack of direct community engagement with low-income Californians, Californians of color, and other underserved communities in the process of redesigning our health care system.

All of this is to say that I see a lot of procedural problems and structural problems in the final report among a lot of other things that I highlighted in my survey comments, and I cannot with full confidence agree that we’ve met our charge as a commission. So I just want to let you all know that I will not be voting to transmit the report, but I am still hopeful that the state of California acts with urgency and takes decisive, effective, formal steps to lead our state and our country to single payer. The final report falls short of providing the necessary ignition that starts us down the road to universal healthcare for all under a single payer system.

I, of course, am truly and deeply appreciative of all of my colleagues on the commission. I absolutely appreciate every conversation that we’ve had, but I also want to recognize and I am truly in awe of the dedication of the members of the public who have stepped up in the past two plus years as a movement to sincerely answer every question and concern about the policy of single payer that has been raised during this commission.

I think together we will keep on fighting to ensure that California acts urgently to transform our profit-driven health care system, our fragmented health insurance system, into a single payer system that prioritizes patient care where everyone is finally in and nobody is out. And with that I want to thank you all again. I deeply appreciate all the work everyone has done and thank you.

Medicare for All is a transformative proposal that will dramatically improve the lives of all people in the US. It is going to take a huge movement to win such a prize. Nurses are leaders in this movement because we understand what is at stake: how much we have to lose if health care is left in the hands of corporations and how much we have to gain when health care professionals are given the power and resources to give the care their patients need.

We are building a movement for Medicare for All, and that means deploying different strategies and tactics at different times. We are clear eyed about the challenge in front of us and what we must do. We know that we are not in a position to pass Medicare for All at the federal level tomorrow. We must continue to do the hard work of building support in the House and Senate by putting pressure on strategic members of Congress. At the same time, we must take our fight directly to the corporations that stand in the way of guaranteed health care for all, spreading misinformation among the public and bankrolling politicians to oppose it. And crucially, in order to win, we must continue to build support for Medicare for All across the country and grow our movement. In particular, that means building support among the people hardest hit by the current broken system. We know that we need a truly diverse working class movement to win Medicare for All, and that is what we seek to build.

Our plans for the spring are meant to help our movement build more power than ever before, and we’re going to need your help alongside us in that fight.

Nurses will continue the fight in California

AB 1400, also known as CalCare, was our single-payer guaranteed health care bill that was introduced into the California State Assembly in early 2021. Unfortunately, AB 1400 failed to move forward by its deadline of January 31st. We are obviously deeply disappointed with the outcome but determined to keep moving forward. It is our intention to keep building on this effort and introduce a new bill in next year’s legislative session. The campaign for CalCare saw Medicare for All supporters reach out to millions of people across California to engage them in the political process and rally their support for CalCare. We are proud of the thousands of people who took action with us and the scale of organizing that took place. While we prepare to resume our fight in California next year, we will continue to fight for Medicare for All nationally — because ALL people deserve to get the life-affirming care that they need, when they need it.

Making gains in the House

Together we have won some incredible victories in the last year, and we are building a powerful cadre of support in the House with 121 cosponsors of the Medicare for All bill H.R.1976 — the highest ever level of support for this bill. In early December, we notched another success in one of our priority districts after Rep. John Garamendi in California’s 3rd district agreed to sign on to the bill. This effort shows that grassroots organizing, led locally, with the support of our national movement behind them, can make the difference. Just two months later, Rep. Donald Norcross signed onto the bill in early February, following pressure from constituents in New Jersey. In addition, two new members of Congress elected in special elections signed on in early February: Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Rep. Shontel Brown, who clearly felt — because of the political landscape our movement has created — that signing onto Medicare for All upon being seated was a necessary thing to do.

Getting all these new co-sponsors took a huge amount of effort. But they show that this hard work pays off.

We will continue to pressure our priority elected officials from the fall — Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, OH-03 (Columbus), Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, TX-15 (San Antonio) and Congressman Albio Sires, NJ-08 (Newark). But we are also focusing our organizing power on three new priority districts: Rep. Darren Soto, FL-09 (Orlando), Rep.

Andy Kim, NJ-03 (Burlington County, South-Central Jersey Shore), and Rep. Julia Brownley, CA-26 (Ventura County). These are members of Congress that we believe can be pushed to sign on with the right amount of local organizing and national pressure.

If you live in one of these districts, we need you to step up and get involved in our local organizing efforts. Sign up here and you’ll receive all the materials, training, and support you need to get started. And if you know someone who lives in one of these districts, please pass the form on to them!

Laying the groundwork in the Senate

While our support and momentum in the House continues to grow, we must be clear with ourselves that we need to build more power in the Senate.

In the last session of Congress, the Senate Medicare for All bill had fourteen cosponsors. Our hope is that Senator Bernie Sanders will re-introduce the bill in the next few months. We need to make sure we are ready if that happens. We need to build support in the Senate and lay the groundwork for a big push.

To do this, we’re setting up Senate Organizing Committees in all states with at least one Democratic US Senator. We need people to step up who are willing to take on a leadership role and collaborate on an effort to get one or both of your US Senators to support Medicare for All.

If you live in one of our target states, sign up to join the Senate Organizing Committee in your state. We will connect you with other local Medicare for All champions, and you’ll receive all the materials, training, and support you need to get started.

Medicare for All Fest

Everyone who steps up to lead organizing efforts in our key House districts and Senate states will start immediately doing vital work to build power in their area and put pressure on our elected officials to show their support for Medicare for All. But they can’t do this alone. As a national movement we will support these local organizing efforts and come together on Saturday April 23rd for a virtual “Medicare for All Fest”!

Medicare for All Fest will be a massive virtual Day of Action to bring more visibility and energy to all our local campaigns and provide a chance for people in those areas and across the country to get plugged in.

We’ll have music, art, speakers, and more on Zoom. We are inviting all supporters of Medicare for All to join us. You can sign up here.

Taking on our corporate opponents

We will need legislation to enact Medicare for All, but we will also need a head on fight with our corporate opponents if we are to get to a place where passing legislation is possible. In order to win health care as a human right, we have to take our fight directly to the corporations that are spending millions of dollars to try to stop us.

That fight starts with CVS Health and the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future. The Partnership is the most powerful dark-money lobbying group trying to block Medicare for All. And CVS Health, now the largest health care corporation in the world, is their largest single known donor to date.

We are challenging CVS repeatedly and publicly and demanding that they publicly cut ties with the Partnership. We will be turning up the heat over the next few months in the build up to the biggest day in the corporate calendar, CVS’s annual shareholder meeting.

The next stage for our campaign this spring is a national art contest. CVS has tried to rebrand itself as a corporation that cares about their customers’ health and that can be trusted with increasingly more aspects of our health care. But if they really cared about patients more than profits, they wouldn’t be working to block Medicare for All.

We are calling on all artists and creatives in the movement to help take CVS’s logo, slogan, and other aspects of their branding and create art that shows CVS for what they really are: a company profiteering from people’s pain while spending millions to keep our health care system dysfunctional.

You can find out more about the art contest and get involved here.

We’re specifically looking for visual art pieces that can be used as posters and postcards. This art will become a powerful tool of protest which we will use to target their HQ and their stores in the build up to their shareholder meeting in May.

Building the movement we need to win

All our efforts — to pressure politicians and to take on our corporate opponents — rely on building a powerful grassroots movement. That means building widespread support in the public and building a core of committed activists who are willing to do the hard work to win.

To be truly powerful, this movement must include and represent all working people. It is essential that we are building a diverse multicultural movement. We are working to make that happen, and we need your help.

If we want to win health care as a human right, one thing is clear: we must consistently center the communities most directly and harshly impacted by our broken system. We are trying to do that in two ways: first, through our Medicare para Todos program, and second, through our webinars on how Medicare for All will help tackle racial health disparities.

Our Medicare para Todos program engages native Spanish speakers. Through our texting program so far, we’ve successfully sent over 400,000 texts to Spanish-speaking voters in California to identify supporters and plug them into our campaign. We are now preparing to launch a Spanish-language Call Team to call Spanish-speaking supporters of Medicare for All to further engage them in our campaign.

If you are a fluent Spanish speaker we need you to get involved. You can use this form to sign up to join our Texting Team, our Call Team, or both!

We are also running English and Spanish language webinars on the racial disparities of the current system and the ways that Medicare for All would seek to address them. You can sign up for an English language webinar here and a Spanish webinar here. Our staff is also available to present these webinars — in English or Spanish — to partner organizations that work directly with communities of color — so get in touch if that is you.

Forward to Medicare for All

We believe that these strategic pillars — building our movement, focusing on specific elected officials in the House and Senate, and taking on our corporate opponents — will help move us closer to our goal of health care justice for all. We know that change as big as that which we are demanding is not easy, but we know that there is no force as strong as people united together in a fight for justice. Nurses never give up. We are in this fight until we win. We are honored to work alongside you in this movement for justice. Onward!

Ever since we found out that CVS has been funding anti-Medicare for All lobbyists we have been on their case. We’ve challenged them on social media, and targeted their stores again and again.

Most recently we have been challenging them in black and white, on the pages of our local newspapers across the country. Nurses and other supporters of Medicare for All have been writing to their local papers, highlighting the link between CVS, the dark money lobbying group the Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future, and politicians who block the passage of health care reform.

These letters tell the story of why we need Medicare for All…

“As a registered nurse, I am deeply disturbed that over 27 million people lost their employer-sponsored health insurance when they lost their jobs when businesses closed due to the pandemic. It drove home to me what I’ve experienced during my 46 years caring for patients in Philadelphia hospitals. Too many disadvantaged people fall through the cracks because of our profit driven health care system.” — Marie E Kelly, Springfield, PA — NNU member

“In the last 45 years of working in health care, most of it as a physician, I have realized that the quality of health care would improve, and the cost decrease, if we had a single payer health care system. While most other developed nations have national health care, and seventy percent of U. S. citizens support Medicare for All, it was a mystery to me why the USA does not have health care for every citizen. It has become clear that some of our health care corporations are actively working against health care reform.” — Lonnie Weinheimer, Silver Spring, MD

“Recently, I was treated for an infection (not Covid) with a common antibiotic that should be fairly inexpensive. But I received a bill for over $5,000. The cost is so high because Medicare is barred from negotiating prices with drug companies even though Medicaid and the VA can negotiate lower prices. This is pure exploitation and needs to be fixed. The best way to do so, is for the U.S. to adopt Medicare for All. 70% of Americans support Medicare for All, but powerful corporate interests are determined to block it.” — William Bianchi, Chicago, IL

They explain why we are targeting CVS:

“As a retired nurse… I’m deeply concerned that CVS Health has taken a shocking position against fixing our broken health care system…A health care-related company’s efforts to undermine our ability to improve health in order to enrich itself is hypocrisy of the grandest order.” — Tanya Wagner, M.Ed., R.N. (ret.), Hampden Township, Pa.

“For-profit corporations, like CVS, are bankrolling lobbyists to keep Medicare for All off the table. Why am I picking on CVS in particular? Because for over 30 years, the local CVS has been my pharmacy! I know, like, and trust the pharmacist and the techs, but I feel betrayed by their employer! Since CVS bought the private insurer Aetna, it is now the biggest health care company in the U.S., and it has a vested interest in blocking Medicare for All. CVS is using profits from the money you and I pay them to subsidize dark money PACs like the Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future. And here I thought CVS was concerned about my health and well-being. Shame on you, CVS!” — Marnie Thompson, Greensboro NC

“While claiming to care about our health, I recently discovered that CVS, in fact, is a major funder of PAHCF. As it turns out, CVS–what I thought of as my neighborhood pharmacy — actually owns Aetna, the third largest private health insurance company in the U.S. So CVS actually brings drug company and insurance company greed together under one roof” — Vickie Mueller Olvera, San Jose, CA

And how they are bankrolling the Partnership:

“The Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future is the number one dark money lobbying group fighting Medicare for All and all health care reform. Over the past year, Congress has attempted to enact reforms to our broken system, but large and powerful corporations have blocked it at every turn.” — Scott Johnson, Auburn, CA

“I recently learned that CVS, my go-to pharmacy, is bankrolling a dark money lobbying group that is fighting against Medicare for All. The Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future spends massive amounts of money paying off politicians to protect corporate bottom lines over the health of patients. CVS claims to care about patient’s health, but clearly cares more about their profits.” — Gwen D’Arcangelis, Chicago, Il

All of our letters have the same demand.

“I understand that you must consider bottom line profit, but at what cost? How can you participate in killing Medicare for All when it would save so many lives? I implore you to cut ties immediately with this dark money group. How can we ever trust you if you do not?” — Connie Lantz, Longview, WA

“I demand that CVS Health cut ties with the Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future, as well as other corporate interests fighting health care reform, immediately.” — Joanna F Welch, Eureka, CA

Our letters have a dual purpose. Firstly, we want to shine a spotlight onto the murky world of corporate dark money lobbyists and show the public what CVS and the Partnership are doing to make our country a less healthy and less democratic place. Secondly, our letters are speaking directly to CVS: we are demanding that they cut their ties with the Partnership. We are going to keep demanding they do this until we have guarantees. And we will keep on coming up with more creative ways to do it. So, what do you say CVS? Are you going to cut ties with the Partnership?

Our campaign against CVS is part of our bigger plan to win Medicare for All. Nurses have been leading the fight for Medicare for All for decades because we know it’s the only way to build a future where everyone has the right to health care, and nurses are free to care for patients without constraints imposed by profit-driven corporations.

Our grassroots campaign for Medicare for All has grown by leaps and bounds, leading to unprecedented support in Congress. But we know that if we want to win, we need to directly take on the health care corporations that are trying to stop us. And that starts with CVS.

Join us! Click here for all the information you need to write your own letter to the editor about CVS.

We wanted to take the time to talk more in depth about what happened with AB 1400 and how we move forward together as a movement.

As you may have heard, Monday, January 31st was the deadline for AB 1400, the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act (CalCare), to pass out of the State Assembly. And though AB 1400 passed the Health and Appropriations committees and was scheduled for a vote on the floor, we were outraged to learn that the bill was being pulled just minutes before legislators were to go on the record about where they stand on guaranteed health care for all people in California.

CNA deeply disagreed with the decision to pull the bill. After months of organizing by thousands of people in the grassroots movement across the state, this failure by our elected representatives to take on the greed of the corporate health care industry was a profound disappointment. In their inaction, legislators have chosen to maintain a broken status quo instead of putting patients above profits.

Nevertheless, nurses never give up on our patients. We have fought for decades to ensure that health care is a human right for all people, regardless of ability to pay. We will not stop now.

The campaign to pass CalCare this year was just the latest in a decades-long struggle to transform our health care system. Efforts around AB 1400 began in late 2020, and in the last year we saw an unprecedented redoubling of efforts by thousands of people across California. Let’s recap what our achievements were together:

Volunteers stepped up in 33 key Assembly Districts to be District Leaders. These dedicated people led efforts in their district, recruited others to join them, and organized numerous events for their district from text banks to phone banks to legislative visits.

In September, we held “CalCare Fest” with several hundred attendees who attended mini breakout room workshops on talking to your friends and family about CalCare, talking to your coworkers about CalCare, how to use social media to promote the campaign, and even how to make a TikTok video about CalCare.

Together we texted 3.7 million voters across California in key Assembly Districts to ask them to support CalCare and to sign a petition for their district. We also made nearly 70,000 phone calls as we called back all the CalCare supporters we identified from texting to ask them to call their Assemblymember and get involved in our campaign in the lead up to January. As a result of this effort, we saw thousands of new supporters sign up to join the campaign in key geographies.

In December, with the help of about 600 volunteers we sent 12,000 handwritten, personalized postcards to these same supporters, also asking them to get involved.

Together with our friends at Public Citizen, dozens of you helped pass resolutions in support of CalCare and Medicare for All in at least 28 cities and municipalities throughout California.

Alongside all of this work were also multiple statewide Days of Action. The latest heralded the start of the new legislative session, taking place on Saturday, January 8th. 15 volunteer-led car caravan actions took place that day around the state with a massive flagship car rally and caravan taking place in Sacramento at the Capitol.

In short, we organized like hell, and together we built one of the most successful grassroots campaigns to date for guaranteed health care for all in California.

So for CalCare to be pulled just minutes before it’s floor vote in the Assembly was heartbreaking for the thousands of us across the state who poured countless hours into organizing on its behalf. It is tragic that the present state of affairs in health care will continue for any longer.

Just days before the vote, the California Health Care Foundation released a survey that found half of Californians skipped or postponed some type of health care in the last 12 months due to cost; 47 percent of those said that their condition worsened as a result, an increase from a survey the year before. These are the results of a system that is organized around the profit imperative. It is entirely unjust — and the failure of the legislature to move CalCare forward will mean that costs will continue to rise and thousands of additional lives will be lost.

And let us be absolutely clear: corporate-friendly incrementalist approaches to reforming our health care system are incapable of solving the problem. Piecemeal expansions of insurance only bolster the power of insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical corporations and will not ensure that those who need care can get it.

Timid incrementalism is incapable of taking on the power and greed of the corporate health care industry and will not ever deliver us a system that ensures health care to all. Only a mass movement has the ability to overcome the opposition of an entrenched and moneyed industry that is hell-bent on maintaining the status quo. This is our task: to continue building our movement in our communities, in our hospitals, in the streets, conversation by conversation — until health care is a right for all people and not just a privilege for those who can afford it. We cannot and will not stop until it is done.

Our movement for health care justice has undeniably grown over the past two years. We now have more active volunteers and are more organized than ever before. And despite our setback, we are more determined than ever to continue pushing until we achieve real health care justice.

Our intention is to introduce a new bill into the legislature next year. We’ll share more information closer to the summer about how you can get involved in those efforts no matter where you live.

In the meantime, if you’re wondering how you can plug in — our fight for Medicare for All at the national level isn’t slowing down, and we need your help. We’re organizing a National Medicare for All Strategy Call on Monday, Feb 28th, at 5 PT/8 ET. RSVP here to join us on that call!

Thanks for all you do in the movement. Whether you’ve been a District Leader, sent texts, written postcards, or attended a Day of Action, we’re grateful you are here, and we are proud to work alongside you in this righteous fight for health care justice.

Together, we will win. Onward to CalCare.

From Honolulu to Houston, people have been taking on the fourth biggest corporation in the country, demanding that they stop blocking Medicare for All.

Hundreds of nurses and supporters have targeted nearly 400 CVS stores from coast to coast. Our message is clear: CVS must stop putting profits over patients. That means they must end their efforts to stop Medicare for All.

Our message is simple, but our protest has been creative! We have been taping our demands to the front of CVS stores. Our demands are in the style of the notoriously long CVS receipts. But instead of overpriced medications and candies, our ‘receipts’ are long because they contain the names of the tens of thousands of people supporting our campaign.

On one Saturday in September alone, activists visited over 200 stores in 27 states, showing the size of our movement and the strength of our conviction that CVS Health is part of the problem and not part of the solution when it comes to health care.

People have stepped up all across the country. Every one of these red dots shows a location where someone took action at a CVS!

Nurses and activists have been working together to turn up the heat. Here’s Shirley in Sacramento, California, registered nurse and retired California Nurses Association Board member!

And here’s Margaret taking action against CVS in Virginia:

These actions are part of a growing campaign against CVS. When we heard about their efforts to stop Medicare for All, we launched a massive social media campaign to expose them, collected over 30,000 petition signatures, drove hundreds of calls to their corporate headquarters during their annual shareholder meeting, and followed these up with our receipt actions. We also started a program of political education, hosting a panel discussion featuring anti-monopoly experts, journalists, and activists where we mapped out a plan to fight back against CVS Health’s corporate greed. And this is just the beginning.

What has CVS been up to?

In April 2021, it was uncovered by The Intercept that CVS Health had become the largest single donor to the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future.

In the middle of a pandemic that has killed millions worldwide, CVS Health had quietly made a $5 million donation to the number one dark-money lobbying group fighting against Medicare for All.

The Partnership is a corporate front group set up to block any attempts at reforming our broken health care system. It was formed back in 2018, in direct response to our campaign for Medicare for All. It represents the most consolidated and well organized corporate opposition of our movement to date.

Together, they represent the biggest ‘health care’ corporations in the country. These are companies that would be seriously weakened, if not eliminated, by Medicare for All — because Medicare for All puts people above profits. But the Partnership is not just committed to stopping Medicare for All. They are opposed to any health care reform that would take a single dollar away from their bottom lines. The truth is that they benefit from it being broken, and they have their own dark vision for the future of health care in the US.

The corporate vision for our health care future

You might wonder why your local pharmacy is bankrolling efforts to turn politicians and the public against guaranteed health care for everyone. We know that Medicare for All would save the public $300 billion a year on prescription drugs alone, and with CVS taking in 25% of prescription drug revenue nationwide, Medicare for All would hit CVS’ bottom line by helping people get the care they need.

But there’s more to it. Because CVS sees themselves as more than a pharmacy. After purchasing the health insurance corporation Aetna in 2018, CVS became the largest ‘health care’ corporation in the world. And they have plans to get bigger. The Wall Street Journal recently characterized CVS as trying to become the ‘Amazon of health care.’ What does that mean?

Imagine you show up acutely ill in the emergency room and the medical staff agree you need to be hospitalized immediately — but instead of admitting you, they tell you to pop into your nearest CVS. Or you get sent home with an iPad, a monitor, and the promise of “virtual care.” No hands-on care, no 24/7 registered nurses and other skilled providers to watch for those slight tell-tale changes in your condition, no one to hold your hand or calm your fears.

This is the dark vision for our health care future shared by CVS — with their ‘Minute Clinics’ and ‘Health Hubs’ — and other corporate ‘health care’ outfits.

Just like with Kaiser’s plans to leave patients ‘Home All Alone’, this is all about squeezing more money out of our broken health care system, closing hospitals, and denying patients care from professional health care workers.

This is the opposite of the nurses’ vision for health care: top quality care for everyone when they need it.

Winning Medicare-for-All means challenging ‘health care’ corporations head on

Our campaign against CVS is part of our bigger plan to win Medicare for All. Nurses have been leading the fight for Medicare for All for decades because we know it’s the only way to build a future where everyone has the right to health care, and nurses are free to care for our patients without constraints imposed by profit-driven corporations.

Nurses witness the devastation and harm caused to patients by profit-driven ‘health care’ corporations every day. Those same corporations are using their billions in profits to unduly influence politicians and candidates running for office in order to prevent any significant health care reforms from progressing. We want to heal the root cause of the disease, and that means taking the fight to the politicians that oppose us and the corporations that bankroll them.

In the last three years, our grassroots campaign for Medicare for All has grown by leaps and bounds, leading to unprecedented support in Congress. But we know that if we want to win, we need to directly take on the health care corporations that are trying to stop us.

What’s next?

CVS has been put on notice. We do not trust them with our health care. We will not allow them to get in the way of our movement for true health care justice. ​​Thanks to months of pressure and activism, CVS Health was forced to respond to us. They put out a weak statement claiming to not ‘currently’ fund the Partnership. But that’s not enough for us, so we will continue to ramp up the pressure. Stay tuned for our next actions, and for some exciting plans in the new year. If you are not already on our CVS campaign email list, make sure to join here.

We know that CVS is not the only corporation profiting from people’s suffering and working to deny health care to the country. That’s why CVS is not our only priority. We will keep working to expose the actions of the Partnership and to drive a wedge between these corporate lobbyists and the politicians they seek to influence. We will challenge the Partnership at every turn, and we will challenge the corporations who are using it to further their efforts to squeeze more dollars out of our broken health care system and to buy our democracy.

Challenging our corporate opponents is one part of the strategy to win Medicare for All. Another crucial piece is building pressure on members of Congress to stand with us and to co-sponsor the bill. Our grassroots movement has had great success at doing this, but we cannot and will not let up the pressure. If this is your first time hearing about this part of our campaign, you can take action with us here.

When nurses started campaigning for guaranteed health care for all, we knew that it would not be an easy task. Every major victory for the people — from workers’ rights to voting rights to Civil Rights — has taken a huge amount of effort and perseverance from a movement of people committed to the cause. But they knew that the cause was just, and that the change was necessary. We know that companies motivated by profit will never be a match for nurses motivated by care. We know that corporations have money, but that we have people. And we believe that we will win.

A few weeks ago in late October, California Assemblymember Ash Kalra embarked on what he dubbed a “CalCare Policy Tour” to Canada, New York, and Washington D.C. to gather information and build connections in support of his single-payer health care bill AB 1400, the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act, aka CalCare.

The California Nurses Association (CNA)-sponsored bill was introduced earlier this year by Kalra, along with Assemblymembers Alex Lee and Miguel Santiago, and 16 additional coauthors. The statewide single-payer movement is preparing for the bill’s highly anticipated return to the legislature in January.

On his trip, Kalra met with Canadian health administrators and elected officials, NY single-payer activists, the lead author of the NY state single-payer bill, members of Congress, and Biden’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Department. According to Kalra, the tour provided a unique opportunity to discuss and advocate for a single-payer health care system with key leaders and staff and to learn from policy experts on different health care delivery and payment systems.

In Canada, Kalra arrived in Deep River, a rural town in Ontario where he lived as a child for a few years. He was welcomed by Deep River Mayor Sue D’Eon who helped organize meetings with Canadian health care providers to learn how their single-payer health system delivers care to its residents and how the system provides incentives for providers to serve rural areas of Canada.

Assemblymember Kalra also visited Toronto, where he had a series of meetings with academics and government officials at the provincial and federal level. He met with Professors Michael Widner and Raisner Deber from the University of Toronto, who gave an overview on how Canada’s system compares to the U.S. Multi-Payer System. He also met with officials from the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, a publically funded universal health plan, to discuss Ontario’s health care system and financing mechanisms.

Kalra said it was interesting to note that the Canada Health Act constitutionally empowers states to run provincial systems with financial support from the federal government. While there are basic tenets that each province must satisfy to ensure comprehensive and quality care, ultimately, it is the individual provinces that set-up their unique systems.

The tour went east to Quebec City, where Assemblymember Kalra was graciously greeted by Melanie Zimmerman, the U.S. Consul General in Quebec City. He was later greeted by a delegation from Quebec’s Ministry of International Relations and La Francophonie and Ministry of Health and Social Services.

Quebec maintains a stance of fierce independence from the federal government and further established the control of provinces over health care systems. Kalra noted that the provincial variety of health systems was exemplified by the Quebec system providing for pharmaceuticals, something unique from other provinces.

Returning to the United States, Assemblymember Kalra arrived in New York City to build the bridge between California and New York’s respective state efforts in the Medicare for All movement. He met with-long time New York Assemblymember Dick Gottfried, often referred to as the “Godfather” of New York’s single-payer bills, to share the history and challenges faced with passing a single-payer health care bill despite Democratic majorities. New York’s current bill, the New York Health Act [A.6058/S.5474], like AB 1400, is still going through the legislative process, and it is strongly supported by a diverse coalition. Kalra later met with organizers from the Campaign for New York Health to hear how people are engaging in progressive activism to push for the New York Health Act, and he thanked them for their tireless efforts.

Closing out the last two days of the CalCare Policy Tour in Washington D.C. with a wealth of knowledge from Canada and New York, Assemblymember Kalra had a series of productive meetings and check-ins with Congressional leaders and representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Starting with California’s U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, a longtime proponent of single-payer, Kalra said that the Senator was eager to hear the steps being undertaken in California. Assemblymember Kalra was also able to connect with key Congressional supporters of the Medicare for All movement, including Congresswoman Katie Porter and Congressman Ro Khanna.

After meetings with Congressional leaders, Assemblymember Kalra met with HHS staff to understand the steps for states considering federal waivers to capture federal funding for the purpose of a state-run single-payer health system. According to Kalra, the main takeaway from the meeting was the reaffirmation that state legislative action is necessary for a state to apply for federal waivers. He said the ongoing assistance offered by the Department was encouraging and provides opportunity for constant feedback from our federal partners as AB 1400 makes its way through the legislature.

Assemblymember Kalra said that the information gathered and lobbying done during the CalCare Policy Tour will complement the work of the CalCare campaign and other single-payer health care movements around the nation. He returned home to California “more energized and motivated than ever to bring single-payer health care to all Californians.”

Sign the CalCare petition to support AB 1400 and get involved in the CalCare campaign. For more information, visit Assemblymember Kalra’s AB 1400 website or read CNA’s CalCare resources doc.