Three powerful Democratic women senators have come aboard the Medicare for All train and it is picking up momentum.
Earlier this month, Senator Kirstin Gillibrand (D. N.Y.) announced that she would co-sponsor Bernie’s upcoming Medicare-for-All bill. Subir did a great post on it:
Over the past few months, an increasing number of Democrats have expressed support for the proposal. On that note, I’m proud that my Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, supports Medicare For All.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) supports single-payer Medicare For All.
In July, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D. Mass.) announced her support for MFA:
“President Obama tried to move us forward with health-care coverage by using a conservative model that came from one of the conservative think tanks that had been advanced by a Republican governor in Massachusetts,” she told The Wall Street Journal. ”Now it’s time for the next step. And the next step is single payer.”
Elizabeth Warren: ‘The next step is single-payer’ health care
And yesterday, Senator Kamala Harris announced that she would co-sponsor Bernie’s forthcoming MFA bill:
Sen. Kamala Harris will co-sponsor a Medicare-for-all plan proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), she told Californians at a town hall in Oakland on Wednesday.
LA Times
“Health care should be a right, not a privilege,” she said. “This should not be a partisan issue. It shouldn’t even be a bipartisan issue. It should be a nonpartisan issue.”
She also argued that a single-payer system care would make fiscal sense.
“It is so much better that people have a meaningful access to affordable health care at every stage of life — from birth onward,” she said. “The alternative is that taxpayers are paying huge amounts of money for them to get health care in an emergency room.”
Mercury News
Bernie thanked her for her support of MFA:
Here’s some video from msnbc about Senator Harris’s decision. I don’t know how to embed it, so just follow the link. It’s VIMEO.
Video: Sen Kamala Harris Gets Kudos From Bernie Sanders for Co-sponsoring MFA bill
Three strong women. Three Democratic senators. Three potential presidential candidates in 2020.
All supporting Medicare for All. Its time has come. We won’t pass it while Republicans hold the Congress and Presidency, but we build support now and pass it when Dems take over.
"Look, I have no illusions that under a Republican Senate and a very right-wing House and an extremely right-wing president of the United States, that suddenly we're going to see a Medicare-for-all, single-payer passed," he said recently, sitting in his Senate office. "You're not going to see it. That's obvious."
The point of the bill, Sanders says, is to force a conversation: "Excuse me: why is the United States the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people? Why are we spending far, far more per capita on health care than any other nation? Why do we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs?"
NPR
That conversation is off to a great start.