Over five million people in the U.S. have lost their employer-based healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to win a universal, Medicare for All system.
Here are three actions you can take right now to build the movement for Medicare for All:
- Help grow the size of the movement: RSVP for a Movement Builder Training this week or next.
- RSVP for an upcoming COVID-19 Public Education Webinar sponsored by UE ally National Nurses United.
- Save the date of a National Day of Action on Saturday, August 22. Watch the UE Medicare for All page for more information as that date gets closer.
Our health care system fails to provide quality care to every U.S. resident and wastes hundreds of billions of dollars a year in unnecessary administrative costs. The COVID-19 pandemic has only further highlighted the need to completely overhaul U.S. health care. A Medicare for All single-payer system — supported by UE since 1943 — would expand and improve the cost-effective and administratively efficient Medicare program to finance comprehensive, high-quality health care for everybody in the U.S.
Over the course of last year, UE conducted a “How to Fix Healthcare” workshop with UE members around the country. Part of the workshop includes members filling out a healthcare costs calculator to figure out how much they are *already* paying for healthcare — and it turns out that many UE members are spending between 15 and 25 percent of their income on healthcare costs, between premium shares, co-pays and deductibles. In addition to the cost, UE members are facing ever-greater limits on when and where they can use their benefits.
Medicare for All would not only save most union members (and other working people) money, it would take healthcare off the bargaining table, where employers regularly hold it over our heads.