Over 150 people came out to demand Medicare for All at the historic Women’s Building in San Francisco on a rainy evening Tuesday, Feb. 12. Opening the program, CNA co-president and an RN nurse with 40 years’ experience, Zeini Cortez, said: “I want all of you to know that the nurses are with you in this fight. As nurses we witness every day of our lives what happens when you have a broken system, when you have a system based on profits more than patient’s needs.”
The national week of action organizing for Medicare for All comes to a close on Feb. 13. Hundreds of events were organized in cities across the United States that presented a plan of action to support the Medicare for All bill set to be introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal. The Medicare for All bill was described as a comprehensive bill that covers health care for all residents of the United States with no co-pays and no deductibles. The list of coverage was quite impressive and included preventative, dental, reproductive, long-term, vision, and more. You can read more in a statement from the nurses’ union here.
Energy and enthusiasm
The well-attended San Francisco event was characterized by energy and enthusiasm. Many of the attendees were nurses and single-payer health care activists. Party for Socialism and Liberation organizers who attended the event and flyered outside before it started noted that attendees as well as those walking by were extremely friendly to the idea that health care should be a right, not a privilege. Following an update about the Medicare for All bill and a video produced by the National Nurses Union, participants broke down into groups to organize campuses to canvass people across San Francisco.
The centerpiece of the union’s strategy was to get teams into the streets and knocking on doors asking people to take action by calling and mailing their representatives. San Francisco is represented in the House of Representatives by conservative Democratic Party establishment politician Nancy Pelosi. She is hostile to the Medicare for All movement and has been trying to bury the new bill in committees where it won’t be able to move forward. The canvassing will focus on flooding her office with demands to support the Medicare for All bill.
At this point, the Nurses’ Union and the Medicare for All movement hasn’t announced a mass mobilization to protest in the streets, which would be an important next step in building the movement. However, the level of organization and informational clarity displayed at last night’s barnstorm in San Francisco was exciting. The substance of the bill addresses the failure of the Affordable Care Act to alleviate the health care crisis for the working class in the United States. It puts forward an important reform that would truly address the crisis for so many by removing the insurance companies from the equation and reducing the profit motive that is so central to the criminal U.S. health care system.
